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HUGH, BISHOP OF LINCOLN 



This edition is for circulation only in the United States 
of A?nerica, 




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LONDON = ZnW>.R!l ARNO LU .'.g 01 



HUGH 

BISHOP OF LINCOLN 

A SNORT STOR V 

OF ONE OF 

TBE MAKERS OF MEDIAEVAL ENGLAND 



BY 

CHARLES L. MARSOxN 

CURATE OF HAMBRIDGE 
AUTHOR OF "TFE PSALMS AT WORK," ETC. 



NEW YORK 

LONGMANS, GREEN & CO., 91-93, Fifth Avenue 

London : EDWARD ARNOLD, 37, Bedford Street 
1901 



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U^f\VI^• BROTHERS, THE GRESHAM PRESS. WOKING AND LOXDON. 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER PAGE 

INTRODUCTION . . . . vii 

I. THE BOY HUGH . . . .1 

II. BROTHER HUGH .... 12 

III. PRIOR HUGH . . , .26 

IV. THE BISHOP ELECT AND CONSECRATE . 42 
V. THE BISHOP AT WORK . . . 60 

VI. IN TROUBLES .... 78 

VII. AND DISPUTES . . . -94 

VIII. THE BUILDER . . . . Ill 

IX. UNDER KING JOHN .... I28 

X. HOMEWARD BOUND . . . I43 



I 



INTRODUCTION 



IN a short biography the reader must expect short 
statements, rather than detailed arguments, and 
in a popular tale he will not look for embattled lists 
of authorities. But if he can be stirred up to search 
further into the matter for himself, he will find a list 
of authorities ancient and modern come not unaccep- 
table to begin upon. 

The author has incurred so many debts of kindness 
in this work from many friends, and from many who 
were before not even acquaintances, that he must 
flatly declare himself bankrupt to his creditors, and 
rejoice if they will but grant him even a second-class 
certificate. Among the major creditors he must 
acknowledge his great obligations to the hospitable 
Chancellor of Lincoln and Mrs. Crowfoot, to the Rev. 
A. Curtois, Mr. Haig, and some others, all of whom 
were willing and even anxious that the story of 
their saint should be told abroad, even by the 
halting tongues of far-away messengers. The same 
kind readiness appeared at Witham : and indeed 
everybody, who knew already about St. Hugh, has 
seemed anxious that the knowledge of him should be 



Vlll INTRODUCTION 

spread abroad. It has snowed books, pamphlets, 
articles, views, maps, and guesses ; and if much has 
remained unsaid or been said with incautious 
brusqueness, rather than with balanced oppressive- 
ness, the reader who carps will always be welcome 
to such material as the author has by him, for eluci- 
dating the truth. If he has been misled by a bhnd 
guide, that guide must plead that he has consulted 
good oculists and worthy spectacle-makers, and has 
had every good intention of steering clear of the 
ditch. 

Though what a man is counts for more than what 
he does, yet the services of St. Hugh to England may 
be briefly summed up. They w^ere (i) Spiritual. He 
made for personal holiness, uncorruptness of public 
and private life. He raised the sense of the dignity 
of spiritual work, which was being rapidly subor- 
dinated to civic work and rule. He made people 
understand that moral obUgations were very binding 
upon all men. (2) Political. He made for peace at 
home and abroad : at home by restraining the ex- 
cesses of forestars and tyrants ; abroad by opposing 
the constant war policy against France. (3) Consti- 
tutional. He first encountered and checked the over- 
grown power of the Crown, and laid down limits and 
principles which resulted in the Church policy of 
John's reign and the triumph of Magna Carta. 

(4) Architectural. He fully developed — even if he did 
not, as some assert, invent — the Earl}- English style. 

(5) Ecclesiastical. He counterbalanced St. Thomas 
of Canterbury, and diverted much of that martyr's 
influence from an irreconcileable Church policy to 
a more reasonable, if less exalted, notion of liberty. 



INTRODUCTION IX 

(6) He was a patron of letters, and encouraged 
learning by supporting schools, libraries, historians, 
poets, and commentators. 

Ancient authorities for his Life are : — (i) The 
Magna Vita, by Chaplain Adam (Rolls) ; (2) Metrical 
Life, Ed. Dimock, Lincoln, i860 ; (3) Giraldus Cam- 
brensis, VIL (Rolls) ; (4) Hoveden's Chronicle 
(Rolls) • (5) Benedicti, Gesta R. Henry H. (Rolls) ; 
(6) for trifles, Matthew Paris, L and H. (Rolls), John 
de Oxenden (ditto), Ralph de Diceto (ditto), Flores 
Histor. (ditto), Annales Monastici (ditto) ; (7) also 
for collateral information, Capgrave Illustrious 
Henries (Rolls), WilUam of Newburgh, Richard 
of Devizes, Gervase^s Archbishops of Canterbury, and 
Robert de Monte, Walter de Mapes' De Nugis 
(Camden Soc). Of modern authorities, (i) Canon 
Perry^s Life (Murray, 1879) and his article in the 
Dictionary of National Biography come first ; (2) Vie 
de St. Hughues (Montreuil, 1890) ; (3) Fr. Thurston's 
translation and adaptation of this last (Burns and 
Gates, 1898) ; (4) St. Hugh's Day at Lincoln, a.d. 
1900, Ed. Precentor Bramley (pub. by Clifford 
Thomas, Lincoln, N.D.) ; (5) Guides to the Cathedral, 
by Precentor Venables, and also by Mr. Kendrick ; 
(6) Archaeological matter. Archaeological Institute 
(1848), Somerset Archaeolog. XXXIV., Somerset 
Notes and Queries, vol. IV., 1895, Lincoln Topo- 
graphical Soc, 1841--2 ; (7) Collateral information — 
cf. Miss Norgate's ^^ England under Angevin Kings " 
(Macmillan), Robert Grosseteste, F. E. Stevenson 
(ditto), Stubbs^ '' Opera Omnia '^ of course, Diocesan 
History of Lincoln, Grande Chartreuse (Burns and 
Oates), *^ Court Life under Plantagenets ^' (Hall), 



X INTRODUCTION 

'^ Highways in Normandy'' (Dearmer) ; (8) of short 
studies, Mr. Fronde's and an article in the Church 
Quarterly, XXXIII., and Mrs. Charles' ^'Martyrs 
and Saints" (S.P.C.K.) are the chief. 

Of this last book it is perhaps worth saying that 
if any man will take the trouble to compare it with 
John Brady's Clavis Calendaria, of which the third 
edition came out in 1815, he will see how much the 
tone of the public has improved, both in courtesy 
towards and in knowledge of the great and good 
men of the Christian faith. 

St. Hugh's Post- Reformation history is worth 
noting for the humour of it. He is allowed in the 
Primer Calendar by unauthorised Marshall, 1535 ; 
out in Crumwell and Hilsey's, 1539 ; out by the 
authorised Primer of King and Clerg}^, 1545 ; still 
out in the Prayer-books of 1549 and 1552 ; in again 
in the authorised Primer of 1553 ; out of the Prayer- 
book of 1559 ; in the Latin one of 1560 ; still in both 
the Orarium and the New Calendar of the next 
year, though out of the Primer 1559 j ^^ ^he Preces 
Privatae 1564, with a scornful admonitio to say that 
^'the names of saints, as they call them, are left, not 
because we count them divine, or even reckon some 
of them good, or, even if they were greatly good, pay 
them divine honour and w^orship ; but because they 
are the mark and index of certain matters dependent 
upon fixed times, to be ignorant of which is most 
inconvenient to our people " — to wit, fairs and so on. 
Since which time St. Hugh has not been cast out of 
the Calendar, but is in for ever. 

In the text is no mention of the poor swineherd, 
God rest him ! His stone original lives in Lincoln 



INTRODUCTION XI 

cloisters, and a reproduction stands on the north 
pinnacle of the west front (whereas Hugh is on the 
south pinnacle), put there because he hoarded a peck 
of silver pennies to help build the House of God. 
He lives on in stone and in the memories of the 
people, a little flouted in literature, but, if moral 
evidence counts, unscathedly genuine : honourable 
in himself, to the saint who inspired him, and to 
the men who hailed him as the bishop's mate — no 
mean builder in the house not made with hands. 



CHAPTER I 

THE BOY HUGH 

ST. HUGH is exactly the kind of saint for English 
folk to study with advantage. Some of us listen 
with difficulty to tales of heroic virgins, who pluck 
out their eyes and dish them up, or to the report of 
antique bishops whose claim to honour rests less 
upon the nobility of their characters than upon the 
medicinal effect of their post-mortem humours ; but 
no one can fail to be struck with this brave, clean, 
smiling face, which looks out upon us from a not 
impossible past, radiant with sense and wit, with 
holiness and sanity combined, whom we can all 
reverence as at once a saint of God and also one of 
the fine masculine Makers of England. We cherish 
a good deal of romance about the age in which St. 
Hugh lived. It is the age of fair Rosamond, of 
Crusades, of lion-hearted King Richard, and of 
Robin Hood. It is more soberly an age of builders, 
of reformers, of scholars, and of poets. If trouba- 
dours did not exactly '^ touch guitars,'^ at least 
songsters tackled verse-making and helped to refine 
the table manners of barons and retainers by 
singing at dinn'er time. The voice of law too 

2 



2 HUGH, BISHOP OF LINCOLN 

was not silent amid arms. Our constitutional 
government, already begotten, was being born and 
swaddled. The races were being blended. Though 
England was still but a northern province of a 
kingdom, whose metropolis was Rouen, yet that 
kingdom was becoming rather top-heavy, and 
inclined to shift its centre of gravity northwards. 
So from any point of view the time is interesting. It 
is essentially an age of monks and of monasteries ; 
perhaps one should say the end of the age of monastic 
influence. Pope Eugenius IIL, the great Suger and 
St. Bernard, all died when Hugh was a young man. 
The great enthusiasm for founding monasteries was 
just beginning to ebb. Yet a hundred and fifteen 
English houses were founded in Stephen's reign, and 
a hundred and thirteen in the reign of Henry n.,and 
the power of the monastic bodies was still almost 
paramount in the church. It was to the monasteries 
that men still looked for learning and peace, and the 
monasteries were the natural harbours of refuge for 
valiant men of action, who grew sick of the life of 
everlasting turmoil in a brutal and anarchic world. 
Indeed, the very tumults and disorders of the state 
gave the monasteries their hold over the best of the 
men of action. As the civil life grew more quiet and 
ordered, the enthusiasm for the cloister waned, and 
with it the standard of zeal perceptibly fell to a lower 
level, not without grand protest and immense effort 
of holy men to keep the divine fire from sinking. 

Hugh of Avalon was born in Avalon Castle in 1140, 
a year in which the great tempest of Stephen's 
misrule was raging. In France, Louis VII. has 
already succeeded his father, Louis VI. ; the Moors 



TPIE BOY HUGH 3 

are in Spain ^ and Arnold of Brescia is the centre of 
controversy. Avalon Castle lies near Pontcharra, 
which is a small town on the Bredo, which flows 
into the Isere and thence into the Rhone. It is not 
to be confused with Avallon of Yonne. The Alpine 
valleys about Pontcharra are lovely with flowers and 
waters, and have in them the ^' foot-prints of lost 
Paradise.^' Burgundy here owed some loyalty to 
the empire rather than to France, and its dukes tried 
to keep up a semi-independent kingdom by a 
balanced submission to their more powerful neigh- 
bours. The very name Hugh was an old ducal 
name, and there is little doubt that William de 
Avalon, Hugh's father, claimed kin with the princes 
of his land. He was a ^^ flower of knighthood '^ in 
battles not now known. He was also by heredity of 
a pious mind. Hugh's mother, Anna, a lovely and 
wealthy lady, of what stock does not appear, was 
herself of saintly make. She ^^ worshipped Christ 
in His limbs,'' by constantly washing the feet of 
lepers, filling these wretched outcasts with hope, 
reading to them and supplying their wants. She 
seems to have been a woman of intellectual parts, for 
though she died before Hugh was ten, he had already 
learned under her, if not from her, to use language 
as the sacrament of understanding and understanding 
as the symbol of truth. He had some grip of 
grammar and logic, and though he did not brood 
over ^^ Ovid's leasings or Juvenal's rascalities," rather 
choosing to ponder upon the two Testaments, yet we 
may gather that his Latin classics were not neglected. 
The spiritual life of Grenoble had been nourished 
by a noble bishop, also Hugh, who had seen the 



4 HUGH, BISHOP OF LINCOLN 

vision of seven stars resting upon a certain plot of 
ground, which induced him to grant the same to St. 
Bruno, the founder of the Grande Chartreuse. Here 
he served himself as a simple monk, laying aside his 
bishop's robes, not a score of miles from Avalon. This 
Hugh was a religious and free thinking man, who, 
though he found evil a great metaphysical stumbling 
block to faith, yet walked painfully by the latter. He 
died in 1132 or thereabouts, and his life was most 
probably the occasion of our Hugh's name, and of 
much else about him. 

The De Avalons had two other boys both older 
than Hugh : William, who inherited the lands, and 
Peter, who w^as settled by his brother Hugh at Histon, 
in Cambridge, but he does not seem to have made 
England his home. Hugh had also at least one 
cousin, William, on his mother's side, who attended 
upon him at Lincoln, and who (unless there were 
two of the same name) developed from a knight into 
an holy Canon after his great relative's decease. 
These relatives were always ready to lend a hand 
and a sword if required in the good bishop's quarrels. 
The last particularly distinguished himself in a brawl 
in Lincolnshire Holland, w^hen an armed and 
censured ruffian threatened the bishop with death. 
The good Burgundian blood rose, and William 
twisted the sword from the villain's hand, and with 
difficulty was prevented from driving it into his 
body. 

When the Lady Anna died, her husband, tired of 
war, power, and governance, distributed his property 
among his children. Under his armour he had long 
worn the monk's heart, and now he was able to take 



THE BOY HUGH 5 

the monk's dress, and to " labour for peace after life, 
as he had already won it in life.'' So he took Hugh 
and Hugh's money with him, and went off to the 
little priory of Villarbenoit (of seven canon power), 
which bordered upon his own lands, and which he 
and his forbears had cherished. This little priory 
was a daughter of Grenoble (St. Hugh of Grenoble 
being, as we infer, a spiritual splendour to the De 
Avalons), and, not least in attraction, there was a 
canon therein, far-famed for heavenly wisdom and 
for scholarship besides, who kept a school and 
taught sound theology and classics, under whom 
sharp young Hugh might climb to heights both of 
ecclesiastical and also of heavenly preferment. 
Great was the delight of the canons at their powerful 
postulant and his son, and great the pains taken over 
the latter's education. The schoolmaster laid stress 
upon authors such as Prudentius, Sedulius, and Ful- 
gentius. By these means the boy not only learnt 
Latin, but he also tackled questions of Predestination 
and Grace, glosses upon St. Paul, hymns and methods 
of frustrating the Arian. Above all, he was exercised 
in the Divine Library, as they called the Bible, 
taught by St. Jerome. Hugh was of course the 
favourite of the master, who whipt him with 
difficulty, and kept him from the rough sports of 
his fellow scholars, the future soldiers, and ^^ reared 
him for Christ." The boy had a masterly memory 
and a good grip of his work, whether it were as 
scholar, server, or comrade. The Prior assigned to 
him the special task of waiting upon his old father. 
That modest, kind-hearted gentleman was getting 
infirm, and the young fellow v^as delighted to be 



6 HUGH, BISHOP OF LINCOLN 

told off to lead him, carry him, dress and undress 
him, tie his shoes, towel him, make his bed, cook for 
him and feed him, until the time of the old knight's 
departure arrived. 

The dates of St. Hugh's life and ministrations must 
be taken with a grain of salt. The authorities differ 
considerably, and it is impossible to clap a date to 
some of the saint's way-marks without first slapping 
in the face some venerable chronicler, or some 
thought-worn modern historian. If we say w4th 
the Great Life that Hugh was ordained Levite in his 
nineteenth year, we upset Giraldus Cambrensis and 
the metrical biographer, w^ho put it in his fifteenth ; 
and Matthew Paris and the Legend, who write him 
down as over sixteen. Mr. Dimock would have 
us count from his entry into the canonry, and 
so counts him as twenty-four ; Canon Perry and 
Father Thurston say ^' nineteenth year,'^ or ^' nine- 
teen.'' The Canons Regular of Villarbenoit seem to 
have been rather liberal in their interpretation of 
church regulations, but it is hardly likely that the 
bishop of Grenoble would so far stretch a point as to 
ordain a lad much below the canonical age, even if 
he were of a great house and great piety. Anyhow 
it is hardly worth while for the general reader to 
waste time over these ticklish points. It is enough 
to say that Hugh was ordained young, that he looked 
pink and white over his white stole and broidered 
tunic, and that he soon preached vigorously, warmly, 
and movingly to the crowd and to his old acquain- 
tances. Sinners heard a very straightforward message, 
and holy persons were edified by the clever way in 
which he handled difficult topics, and in him they 



THE BOY HUGH 7 

^^ blessed the true Joseph, who had placed his own 
cup in the mouth of his younger brother's sack/' 
Indeed, he must have been a captivating and in- 
teresting young man, and since he was so strikingly 
like Henry II. of England that folks' tongues wagged 
freely about it, we may picture him as a young man 
of moderate height, rather large in the brow, with 
red brown hair, bright grey eyes, large chest, and 
generally of an athletic build and carriage. He had 
a face which easily flushed and told both of anger 
and a lively sense of humour. 

He was the delight of his house, and of the people 
about, who welcomed him with enthusiasm when he 
came back after nearly forty years' absence. But 
most of all he was the apple of the eye to his old 
scholarly father prior, who loved him as his own 
soul. It is not wonderful that when one of the scanty 
brotherhood was called upon to take charge of a 
small country living, the ^^ cell of St. Maximin," the 
zealous deacon was chosen to administer the same. 
The tiny benefice could hardly support one, with 
small household, but Hugh insisted upon having an 
old priest to share the benefice. A little parcel of 
glebe and a few vines, tended by honest rustics, were 
his. They were able by pious frugahty to nourish 
the poor and grace the rich. The parishioners grew 
in holiness. The congregation swelled from many 
sources, and the sermons (of life and word) were 
translated into sound faith and good conversation. 
This experience of parish work must have been of 
the greatest value to the future bishop, for the tragedy 
and comedy of life is just as visible in the smallest 
village as it is in the largest empire. The cloister- 



8 HUGH, BISHOP OF LINCOLN 

bred lad must have learnt on this small organ to play 
that good part which he afterwards was called upon 
to play upon a larger instrument. One instance is 
recorded of his discipline. A case of open adultery 
came under his notice. He sent for the man and gave 
him what he considered to be a suitable admonition. 
The offender replied with threats and abuse. Hugh, 
gospel in hand, pursued him first with two and then 
with three witnesses, offering pardon upon reform 
and penance. No amendment was promised. Both 
guilt and scandal continued. Then Hugh waited for 
a festival, and before a full congregation rebuked him 
publicly, declared the greatness of his sin, handed 
him over to Satan for the death of his flesh with 
fearful denunciations, except he speedily came to his 
senses. The man was thunderstruck, and brought to 
his knees at a blow. With groans and tears he con- 
fessed, did penance (probably at the point of the 
deacon's stick), was absolved and received back to 
the fold ; so irresistible was this young administrator 
who knew St. Augustine's advice that ^' in reproof, if 
one loves one's neighbour enough, one can even say 
anything to him." 

But Hugh was ill at ease in his charge, 
and his heart burned towards the mountains, 
where the Grande Chartreuse had revived the 
austerities of ancient monasticism. It seemed so 
grand to be out of and above the world, in solitary 
congregation, with hair shirt, hard diet, empty flesh 
pot, and full library, in the deep silence and keen air 
of the mountains. Here hands that had gripped the 
sword and the sceptre were turned to the spade and 
lifted only in prayer. There were not only the 



THE BOY HUGH 9 

allurements of hardship, but also his parents^ faith 
and his own early lessons tugging at his heart strings. 
He found means to go with his prior into the awful 
enclosure, and the austere passion seized him. He 
told his heart's desire to an old ex-baron, who pro- 
bably felt some alarm that a young gentleman who 
had campaigned so slightly in the plains of active 
life should aspire to dwell upon these stern hills of 
contemplation. ^^ My dear boy, how dare you think 
of such a thing ? ^^ he answered, and then, looking at 
the refined young face before him, warned the 
deacon against the life. The men were harder than 
stones, pitiless to themselves and to others. The 
place dreary, the rule most burdensome. The rough 
robe would rake the skin and flesh from young 
bones. The harsh discipline would crush the very 
frame of tender youth. 

The other monks were less forbidding. They 
warmly encouraged the aspiration, and the pair 
returned to their home, Hugh strugghng to hide the 
new fire from his aged friend. But the old man saw 
through the artless cloakings and was in despair. 
He used every entreaty to save Hugh for the good 
work he was doing, and to keep his darhng at his 
side. Hugh's affectionate heart and ready obedience 
gave way, and he took a solemn oath not to desert 
his canonry, and so went back to his parishing. 

But then came, as it naturally would come to so 
charming and vigorous a lad, the strong return of that 
Dame Nature who had been so long forked forth by 
his cloistral life. A lady took a liking to this heavenly 
curate. Other biographers hint at this pathetic Htlle 
romance, and cover up the story with tales of a 



lO HUGH, BISHOr OF LINCOLN 

wilderness of women ; but the metrical biographer 
is less discreetly vague, and breaks into a tirade 
against that race of serpents, plunderers, robbers, 
net weavers, and spiders — the fair sex. Still, he 
cannot refrain from giving us a graphic picture of 
the presumptuous she-rascal w^ho fell in love with 
Hugh, and although most of his copyists excise his 
thirty-nine graphic lines of Zuleika's portrait, the 
amused reader is glad to find that all were not of 
so edifying a mind. Her lovely hair that vied w4th 
gold was partly veiled and partly strayed around her 
ivory neck. Her little ear, a curved shell, bore up 
the golden mesh. Under the smoothe clear white 
brow she had curved black eyebrows without a criss- 
cross hair in them, and these disclosed and heightened 
the clear white of the skin. And her nose, too — not 
flat nor arched, not long nor snub, but beyond the 
fineness of geometry, with light, soft breath, and the 
sweet scent of incense. Such shining eyes too : like 
emeralds starring her face with light ! And the face, 
blended lilies and roses in a third lovely hue that 
one could not withdraw one's eyes from beholding. 
The gentle pout of her red lips seemed to challenge 
kisses. Shining as glass, white as a bell flower, she 
had a breast and head joined by a noble poised 
throat, which baited the very hook of love. Upon 
her lily finger she wore a red and golden ring. Even 
her frock was a miracle of millinery. This lovely 
creature, complete to a nail, much disturbed the 
mind of Hugh, and played her pretty tricks upon her 
unexercised pastor : now demure, now smiling, now 
darting soft glances, now reining in her eyes. But he, 
good man, was rock or diamond. At last the fair 



THE BOY HUGH II 

creature actually stroked his arm, and then Hugh was 
startled into a panic. His experience and training 
had not been such as to fit him to deal with situations 
of this sort. He fled. He cut out the skin of the arm 
where her rosy fingers had rested. He found it 
impossible to escape from the sight of many fair maids 
of Burgundy. Zuleika was fascinating enough, but his 
original Adam within (whom he called Dalilah) was 
worse. He forsook his post, broke his vow, and 
bolted to the Grande Chartreuse. 

One modern biographer, who is shocked at his 
perjury to the prior, would no doubt have absolved 
him if he had married the lass against his canonic vows. 
Another thinks him most edifyingly liberal in his 
interpretation of duty. Is there any need to forestall 
Doomsday in these matters ? The poor fellow was 
in both a fix and a fright. Alas ! that duties should 
ever clash ! His own view is given with his own 
decisiveness. ^^ No ! I never had a scruple at all 
about it. I have always felt great delight of mind 
when I recall the deed which started me upon so 
great an undertaking.'^ The brothers of the Charter- 
house gladly took him in, the year being about 1160, 
and his age about twenty, let us say ; hardly an age 
anyhow which would fit him for dealing with pert 
minxes and escaping the witcheries of the beauty 
which still makes beautiful old hexameters. 



CHAPTER II 

BROTHER HUGH 

''"\7E might write th' doin's iv all th' convents iv 
X th' wuiTuld on the back of a postage stamp, 
an' have room to spare," says Mr. Dooley ; and we 
rather expect some hiatus in our history here. Good- 
bye to beef, butter, and good red wheat ; white corn, 
sad vegetables, cold water, sackcloth take their place, 
with fasts on bread and water, and festivals mitigated 
by fish. Goodbye to pillows and bolsters and linen 
shirts. Welcome horse-hair vests, sacking sheets, and 
the ^' bitter bite of the flea," — sad entertainment for 
gentlemen ! Instead of wise and merry talk, wherein 
he excelled, solitary confinement in a wooden cell 
(the brethren now foist off a stone one upon 
credulous tourists) with willing slavery to stern 
Prior Basil. The long days of prayer and medita- 
tion, the nights short with psalmody, every spare five 
minutes filled with reading, copying, gardening and 
the recitation of offices. All tliese the novice took 
with gusto, safe hidden from the flash of emerald 
eyes and the witchery of hypergeometrical noses. 
But temptation is not to be kept out by the diet of 
Adam and of Esau, by locked doors, spades, and 



BROTHER HUGH I 3 

inkpots. The key had hardly turned upon the poor 
refugee when he found he had locked in his enemies 
with him. His austerities redoubled, but as he says 
he ^^ only beat the air ^^ until He who watches over 
Israel without slumber or sleep laid His hand upon 
him and fed him with a hidden manna, so fine and so 
plentiful that the pleasures of life seemed paltry after 
the first taste of it. After this experience our Hugh 
used to be conscious always of a Voice and a Hand, 
giving him cheer and strength, although the strong 
appetites of his large nature troubled him to the 
last. Here Hugh devoured books, too, until the time 
floated by him all too fleetly. 

His great affectionate heart poured itself out upon 
wild birds and squirrels which came in from the 
beech and pine woods, and learned to feed from his 
platter and his fingers. It is difficult to read 
with patience that his prior, fearing lest he should 
enjoy these innocent loves too much, and they would 
^' hinder his devotion," banished these pretty dears 
from the dreary cell. But in charity let us suppose 
that the prior more than supplied their place, for 
Hugh was told off to tend a weak old monk, to sing 
him the offices, and to nurse the invalid. This godly 
old man, at once his schoolmaster and his patient, 
sounded him whether he wished to be ordained 
priest. When he learned that, as far as lay in Hugh 
he desired nothing more, he was greatly shocked, 
and reduced his nurse-pupil to tears by scolding him 
for presumption ; but he presently raised him from his 
knees and prophesied that he would soon be a priest 
and some day a bishop. Hugh was soon after this 
ordained priest, and was distinguished for the great 



14 HUOH, BISHOP OF LINCOLN 

fervour of his behaviour in celebrating the Mass ^'as 
if he handled a visible Lord Saviour" — a touching 
devoutness which never left him, and which con- 
trasted strikingly with the perfunctory, careless or 
bored ways of other priests. He injured his health 
by over-abstinence, one effect of which was to cause 
him to grow fat, Nature thus revenging herself by 
fortifying his frame against such ill-treatment. 

In the talk time after Nones, the brothers had much 
to hear about the storms which raged outside their 
walls. It is rather hard for us nowadays to see things 
through Charterhouse spectacles. There is our lord 
the Pope, Alexander III., slow and yet persistent, 
wrestling hard with the terrible Emperor Frederick 
Barbarossa, who is often marching away to seiges of 
Milan, reducing strong rogues and deeply wronging 
the church (whose forged documents are all purely 
genuine). Then w^hat a hubbub there is in the 
church ! Monstrous anti-popes, one of whom, Victor, 
dies, and a satanic bishop Henry of Liege consecrates 
another, Pascal^ and the dismal schism continues. 
Then our lord Alexander returns to Rome, and the 
Emperor slaughters the Romans and beseiges their 
city and enthrones Pascal. There are big imperial 
plans afoot, unions of East and West, w^hich end in 
talk : but Sennacherib Frederick is defeated by a 
divine and opportune pestilence. Then Pascal dies, 
and the schism flickers, the Emperor crawls to kiss 
the foot of St. Peter, and finally, in 1179, Alexander 
reigns again in Rome for a space. Meantime, 
Louis VII., a pious Crusader, and dutiful son of 
the Regulars, plays a long, and mostly a losing, 
game of buffets with Henry of Anjou, lord of 



BROTHER HUGPI 1 5 

Normany, Maine, Toiiraine, PoitoUj Aquitaine and 
Gascony, and leader of much else besides, King also 
of England, and conqueror of Ireland — a terrible man, 
who had dared to aspire to hang priestly murderers. 
He has forced some awful Constitutions of Clarendon 
upon a groaning church, or a church which ought to 
groan and does not much, but rather talks of the laws 
and usage of England being with the king. But the 
noble Thomas has withstood him, and is banished 
and beggared and his kith and kin with him. The 
holy man is harboured by our good Cistercian 
brothers of Pontigny, where he makes hay and 
reaps and see visions. He is hounded thence. These 
things ignite wars, and thereout come conferences. 
Thomas will not compromise, and even Louis fret- 
fully docks his alimony and sends him dish in hand 
to beg ; but he, great soul, is instant in excom- 
munication, whereafter come renewed brawls, fresh 
(depraved) articles. Even the king^s son is crowned 
by Roger of York, '^ an execration, not a consecra- 
tion.'^ At last (woeful day !) Thomas goes home still 
cursing, and gets his sacred head split open, and thus 
wins the day, and has immense glory and sympathy, 
which tames the fierce anti-anarchist king. He, too, 
kneels to our lord Alexander, and swears to go 
crusading in three years' time, meanwhile paying 
Templars to do it for him. All this comes out in 
driblets after Nones, and brings us to 1171 a.d., 
brother Hugh being aged about one and thirty. 
When the old monk died Hugh was given another 
old man to wait upon — Peter, the Archbishop of 
Tarentaise, who came there often for retreat and 
study. This renowned old man had been a friend 



l6 HUGH, BISHOP OF LINCOLN 

of St. Bernard, and was a great stickler and miracle 
worker for Alexander III., and he was a delegate to 
make peace between Henry and Louis, when he died 
in 1 174. Hugh found his quotations, compiled any 
catena he wished to make, retrieved saintly instances, 
washed his feet, walked with him, and sat with him 
on a seat between two large fir trees, which seat 
'^ miraculously grew no higher, as the trees grew." 
In this manner Hugh knew and was known of the 
outside world, for Archbishop Peter was a man of 
large following and acquaintance. 

And now Hugh is made, wincingly, the procurator 
or bursar of the Grande Chartreuse, after he has spent 
eight years there, and is plunged in a sea of worldly 
business. The prior makes good use of his tact, 
business capacity, and honourable nature. He had 
thought and read to some purpose, for he ruled the 
lay brothers with diligence, and instructed the monks 
with great care, stirring up the sluggish and bitting 
the heady into restfulness. He did his worldly work 
vigorously, and turned it swiftly to spiritual gain. He 
had strong wine of doctrine for the chapter-house, 
milk for the auditorium. The secular people, if they 
were rich, he taught not to trust in riches; if they 
were poor, he refreshed them with such rations as 
the Order allowed. If he had nothing else, he always 
had a kind and cheery word to give. Among the 
travellers must have been many noble postmen, who 
carried letters in their hands and messages in their 
heads from Henry to Humbert of Maurienne, who held 
the keys of all the Alpine roads to Italy and Germany 
and whose infant daughter was betrothed to the boy 
John Lackland with dowries disputable, whereat 



BROTHER HUGH \J 

Henry junior rebels, and makes uncommon mischief. 
The procurator was keen and accurate in his work. 
He never mislaid the books, forgot, fumbled, or made a 
'^ loiter,^^ moraniia^ as they called it, when the office 
halted or was unpunctual. The lay brethren did not 
have to cough at any trips in his reading, which was 
their quaint way of rebuking mistakes. 

Henry H. was reconciled in 1172 and his crusade 
was to begin in 1175 ; but during these years his 
dominions were in constant flame. Scotland and 
France harried him. His sons leagued against him. 
His nobles rose. He fought hard battles, did humble 
penances at St. Thomas^ tomb, and came out vic- 
torious, over his political and ecclesiastical opponents 
too, and began again the ordering of his unruly 
realms. What a rough and tumble world the 
Chronicles reveal as we turn them over ! There is a 
crusade in Asia Minor in 1176. Manuel Commenus 
relates his success and failure. There are heretics 
in Toulouse who are Puritans, half Quaker and half 
Arian, condemned by a Council of Lombers, 1176. 
Next year Henry seems to have begun his penance, 
which was commuted from a crusade into three 
religious foundations, and rather shabbily he did it. 
Some people try to put Newstead in Selwood in the 
list, but this was founded in 1174 ; and Le Liget has 
been mentioned, a Charterhouse in Touraine founded 
in 1 1 78. The most probable explanation is this. 
Henry tried to do the penance (a) by buying out the 
Secular Canons of Waltham at a price determined 
by Archbishop Richard. He replaced these by 
Canons Regular under Walter de Cant. He then 
endowed them handsomely and had papal authority 

3 



1 8 HUGH, BISHOP OF LINCOLN 

for this. (/3) He found this so expensive that he tried 
to do the other two more cheaply. A scandal had 
arisen in Amesbury. He expelled the incontinent 
nuns, and brought over from Font Evroult a colony 
of more devout ladies in their room. The chroniclers 
show that this evasion was severely commented upon, 
and we may conclude that Le Liget was a tardy 
substitute — a cheap strip of forest land granted to 
an order which was celebrated for its dislike of 
covetousness, and whose rules required manual 
labour and a desert (and so valueless) land. Le 
Liget, be it noticed, is founded after the peace of 
Venice has given more power to the Papal elbow. 
The Lateran Council is also a little threatening 
towards King Henry in March, 1179, particularly on 
the question of the ferocity of mercenaries. Young 
Philip Augustus is also evidently succeeding his 
waning father, and generally speaking it is better to 
be conciliatory and to admit that the Amesbury plan 
was perhaps insufficient. At any rate, it is well to 
found another house : Carthusians of course, for they 
are holy, popular, and inexpensive. Henry, who 
was generous enough for lepers, hospitals, and 
active workers, did not usually care very much 
for contemplative orders, though his mother, the 
Empress Matilda, affected the Cistercians and 
founded the De Voto Monastery near Calais, and 
he inherited something from her. These considera- 
tions may have first prompted and then fortified 
Henry's very slow and reluctant steps in the w^ork 
of founding Witham, in substance and not in shadow. 
It is also quite possible that he had not entirely given 
up the notion of going on a crusade after all. 



BROTHER HUGH I9 

The first attempt was little more than a sketch. 
5,497 acres were marked off for the new house, in 
a wet corner of Selwood forest. But the land was 
not transferred from William Fitzjohn and the 
villeins were not evicted or otherwise disposed of. 
The place was worse than a desert, for it contained 
possessors not dispossessed. The poor monks, few 
and unprepared, who came over at their own 
expense, probably expecting a roof and a welcome, 
found their mud flat was inhabited by indignant 
Somersetas, whose ways, manners, language, and 
food were unknown to them. The welcome still 
customarily given in these parts to strangers was 
warmer than usual. The foreign English, even if 
their lands were not pegged out for Charterhouses, 
were persuaded that the brethren were landsharks 
of the most omnivorous type. The poor prior 
quailed, despaired, and hastily bolted, leaving an old 
and an angry monkish comrade to face the situation 
with a small company of lay brothers. Another 
prior arrived, and to the vexation of the king shuffled 
off his maltreated coil in a very short time. After 
spending Christmas (1179-80) in Nottingham, the 
king crossed into Normandy with young Henry 
before Easter, meaning to avenge the wrongs Philip 
Augustus did to his relatives. Here most probably 
it was that a noble of the region of Maurienne (come 
no doubt upon business of the impending war), 
chatted with him about the Charterhouse. He paid 
a warm tribute to Hugh in words of this kind, ^' My 
lord king, there is only one sure way of getting free 
from these straits. There is in the Charterhouse 
a certain monk, of high birth but far higher moral 



20 HUGH, BISHOP OF LINCOLN 

vigour. His name is Hugh of Avalon. He carries 
on him all the grace of the virtues ; but besides, 
every one who knows him takes to him and likes 
him, so that all who see him find their hearts fairly 
caught. Those who are privileged to hear him talk 
are delighted to find his speech divinely or angeli- 
cally inspired. If the new plantation of this most 
holy order in your lands should deserve to have this 
man to dress and rule it, you will see it go joyfully 
forward straight away towards fruiting in every 
grace. Moreover, as I am certain, the whole English 
Church will be very greatly beautified by the 
radiance of his most pure religion and most religious 
purity. But his people will not easily let him go 
from their house, and he will never go to live else- 
where unless it be under compulsion and against his 
will, so your legation must be strong and strenuous : 
you must struggle to compass the matter even with 
urgent prayers until you get this man and him only. 
Then for the future your mind will be released from 
the anxieties of this care, and this lofty religion will 
make a noble growth to your excellency's renown. 
You will discover in this one man, w^ith the whole 
circle of the other virtues, whatever mortal yet has 
shown of longsuffering, sweetness, magnanimity, and 
meekness. No one will dislike him for a neighbour or 
house-mate ; no one will avoid him as a foreigner. 
No one will hold him other than a fellow pohtically, 
socially, and by blood, for he regards the whole race 
of men as part and parcel of himself, and he takes 
all men and comforts them in the arms and lap of 
his unique charity.^' The king was dehghted with 
this sketch, and sent off post haste Reginald, Bishop 



BROTHER HUGH 21 

of Bath (in whose diocese Witham lay), and an 
influential embassage to secure the treasure, if it 
could be done. 

But the man who was being sought had just about 
then been finding the burden of this flesh so ex- 
tremely heavy that he was more inclined to run riot 
in the things that do not belong to our peace than to 
settle comfortably upon a sainf s pedestal or to take 
up a new and disagreeably dull work. The fatal 
temptations of forty, being usually unexpected, are 
apt to upset the innocent more surely than are the 
storms of youth ; and poor Hugh was now so badly 
tried that the long life of discipline must have 
seemed fruitless. He just escaped, as he told his 
too-little reticent biographer, from one nearly fatal 
bout by crying out, ^^ By Thy passion, cross, and life- 
giving death, deliver me.^^ But neither frequent 
confession, nor floggings, nor orisons, seemed to 
bring the clean and quiet heart. He was much 
comforted by a vision of his old prior Basil, who had 
some days before migrated to God. This dear old 
friend and father stood by him radiant in face and 
robe, and said with a gentle voice, ^^ Dearest son, 
how is it with thee ? Why this face down on the 
ground ? Rise, and please tell thy friend the exact 
matter.^' Hugh answered, ^^ Good father, and my 
most kind nurser, the law of sin and death in my 
members troubles me even to the death, and except 
I have thy wonted help, thy lad will even die.^' 
" Yes, I will help thee.'^ The visitor took a razor in 
his hand and cut out an internal inflamed tumour, 
flung it far away, blessed his patient, and disap- 
peared, leaving no trace of his surgery in heart or 



22 HUGH, BISHOP OF LINCOLN 

Hesh. Hugh told this story in his last illness to 
Adam, his chaplain, and added that though after this 
the flesh troubled him, its assaults were easy to 
scorn and to repress, though always obliging him to 
walk humbly. 

The king^s messengers took with them the Bishop 
of Grenoble and unfolded their errand. The 
Charterhouse was horrified, and the prior most 
of all. He delayed a reply. The first prior refused 
the request. The votes varied. Bovo, a monk who 
afterwards succeeded to Witham, declared strongly 
that it was a divine call, that the holiness of the 
order might be advertised to the ends of the earth. 
Hugh was too large a light to keep under their 
bushel. He seems better fitted to be a bishop than 
a monk, he said. Hugh was then bidden to speak. 
He told them that with all the holy advice and 
examples about him he had never managed to keep 
his own soul for one day, so how could any wise 
person think him fit to rule other folk ? Could he 
set up a new house, if he could not even keep the 
rules of the old one ? This is childishness and waste 
of time. ^^ Let us for the future leave such matters 
alone, and since the business is hard and urgent do 
you only occupy yourselves to see that this king^s 
undertaking be frittered no longer away half done, 
to the peril of souls and the dishonour of the holy 
order, and so from among you or from your other 
houses choose a man fit for this work and send him 
with these men. Since these are wise, do you too 
answer them wisely. Grant their desire, not their 
request. Give them a man not such as they seek 
under a mistake, but such as they devoutly and 



BROTHER HUGH 23 

discreetly demand. It is not right that men should 
be heard unadvisedly who mistake the man of their 
request and who do not really want to be mistaken 
in the man^s qualifications. So, in a word, do not 
grant their request, but cheer them by bettering it." 
The prior and Hugh were of one decision. The 
former,^ declared point blank that he would not say 
go, and finally he turned to the Carthusian Bishop 
of Grenoble, ^' our bishop, father, and brother in 
one," and bade him decide. The bishop accepted 
the responsibility, reminded them of the grief which 
arose when St. Benedict sent forth St. Maur to 
Western Gaul, and exhorted Hugh that the Son of 
God had left the deepest recess of His Deity to be 
manifest for the salvation of many. ^^ You too must 
pilgrimage for a little time from your dearest, 
breaking for a while the silence of the quiet you 
have loved." After much interruption from Hugh, 
the sentence was given. They all kissed him and 
sent him away forthwith. The king received him 
with much graciousness and ordered him to be 
carried honourably to Witham, and the wretched 
remnant in the mud flat received him as an angel of 
God. Well they might do so, for they seemed to 
have passed a melancholy winter in twig huts, now 
called ^^ weeps," in a little paled enclosure, not only 
without the requisites of their order, but with barely 
bread to their teeth. There was no monastery, not 
even a plan of one. William Fitzjohn and his clayey 
serfs scowled upon the shivering interlopers, uncer- 
tain what injustice might be done to them and to 
their fathers' homes, in sacrifices to the ghost of St. 
Thomas. 



24 HUGH, BISHOP OF LINCOLN 

Witham is a sort of glorified soup-plate, still 
bearing traces of its old Selwood Forest origin, for 
the woodlands ring round it. The infant river Avon 
creeps through its clayey bottom, and there are 
remains of the old dams which pent it into fish- 
ponds. Of the convent nothing remains except a 
few stumps in a field called " Buildings,^' unless the 
stout foundations of a room, S.E. of the church, 
called the reading-room, mark the guest house, as 
tradition asserts. Much of the superstructure of this 
cannot go back beyond the early sixteenth century, 
but the solid walls, the small size (two cottage area), 
allow of the fancy that here was the site of many 
colloquies between our Hugh and Henry Fitz- 
Empress.^ 

The church itself is one of the two erected by 
St. Hugh, partly with his own hands. It is the 
lay brothers^ church (called since pre-Franciscan 
days, the Friary). The conventual church has left 
no wrack behind. The style is entirely Burgundian, 
a single nave, with Romanesque windows, ending in 
an apse. The '^ tortoise ^^ roof, of vaulted stone, is as 
lovely as it is severe. In 1760 the Tudor oaken bell- 
turret survived. The horrid story of how a jerry- 
built tower was added and the old post-Hugonian 
font built into it, how a new font was after long 
inter\'al added, does not concern us. The tower 
was happily removed, the old font found and 



' The present Vicar is anxious to turn this place, which has 
been alternately cottages, a lock-up, and a reading-room, into 
a lecture hall and parish room ; but the inhabitants, unworthy 
of their historical glories, seem rather disposed to let the old 
building tumble into road metal, to their great shame and 
reproach. 



BROTHER HUGH 25 

remounted (as if the text ran, ^^ One faith, two 
baptisms ^^), and a stone nozzle built to uphold three 
bells. The buttresses are copied from St. Hughes 
Lincoln work. 



CHAPTER III 



PRIOR HUGH 



IT did not require much talent to see that the first 
requisite of the foundation was a Httle money, 
and consequently we find ten white pounds paid 
from the Exchequer to the Charterhouse brethren, 
and a note in the Great Life to say that the king was 
pleased with Hugh's modesty, and granted him what 
he asked for. Next there was a meeting of all who 
had a stake of any kind in the place, who would be 
obliged to be removed lest their noise and movement 
should break the deep calm of the community. It 
was put to each to choose w^hether he would Hke a 
place in any royal manor, with cottage and land 
equal to those they gave up, or else to be entirely 
free from serfdom, and to go where they chose. It is 
noteworthy that some chose one alternative, some 
the other, not finding villeinage intolerable. Next 
came the question of compensation for houses, crops, 
and improvements, that the transfer might be made 
without injustice but with joy on both sides. Here 
Henry boggled a little. '' In truth, my lord," said 
the prior, ^^ unless every one of them is paid to the 



26 



PRIOR HUGH 27 

last doight for every single thing the place cannot be 
given to us.'^ So the king vi^as forced to do a little 
traffic, which he considered to be a dead loss, and 
acquired some very old cottages with rotten rafters 
and cracked walls at a handsome price. The sales- 
men liked this new business ; it filled their pockets, 
and they blessed the new influence. This good 
merchant had traded so as to gain both justice and 
mercy, but he tackled the king once more, with 
twinkling eye. *^ Well, my lord king, you see I 
am new and poor, yet I have enriched you in your 
own land with a number of houses. '^ The king 
smiled. ^4 did not covet riches of this nature. They 
have made me almost a beggar, and I cannot tell of 
what good such goods may be.'' Hugh wanted this 
very answer. ^^ Of course, of course,'' he rejoined, 
'* I see you do not reck much of your purchase. It 
would befit your greatness if these dwelHngs were 
handed over to me, for I have nowhere to lay my 
head." The king opened his eyes and stared at his 
petitioner. ^' Thou wouldst be a fine landlord. Dost 
thou think we cannot build thee a new house ? 
What on earth shouldest thou do with these ? " 
^' It does not befit royal generosity to ask questions 
about trifles. This is my first petition to thee, and 
why, when it is so small, should I be kept waiting 
about it ? " The king merrily answered, ^^ Hear 
the fellow ! Almost using violence too, in a strange 
land. What would he do if he used force, when he 
gets so much out of us by words ? Lest we should 
be served worse by him, he must have it so." The 
cat was soon out of the bag. Each house was pre- 
sented back to the man who had sold it, either to sell 



28 HUGH, BISHOP OF LINCOLN 

or to remove as he chose, lest in any way Jerusalem 
should be built with blood. 

Then the building began, but no more ; for the ten 
white pounds did not go far, and the workmen angrily 
and abusively asked for wages. A deputation went 
off to Henry, who was collecting troops and dismiss- 
ing them, ordering, codifying, defending, enlarging 
and strengthening his heterogeneous empire. Now^ 
he was on one side of the sea, now on the other. 
He promised succour, and the brethren brought 
back — promises. The work stopped, and the Prior 
endured in grim silence. Another embassage is sent, 
and again the lean wallets return still flabby. Then 
the brethren began to turn their anger against the 
Prior. He was slothful and neglectful for not 
approaching the king in person (although the man 
was abroad and busy). Brother Gerard, a white- 
haired gentleman, ^^very successful in speaking to 
the great and to princes,'^ fell upon his superior for 
glozing with a hard-hearted king and not telling him 
instantly to complete the buildings under pain of a 
Carthusian stampede. Not only was the Order 
wronged, but themselves were made fools of, who 
had stuck so long there without being able even to 
finish their mere doUs^ houses. Brother Gerard him- 
self would be delighted to din something into the 
King^s ears in the presence of his prior. To this all 
the brethren said ^^ Aye.'^ Hugh gratefully accepted 
their counsel, and added, '^ All the same, Brother 
Gerard, you will have to see to it that you are as 
modest as you are free in your discourse. It may 
well be, that in order to be able to know us well, that 
sagaciously clever and inscrutable minded prince 



PRIOR HUGH 29 

pretends not to hear us, just to prove our mettle. 
Doubtless he knows that it belongs to that perfection 
which we profess to fulfil, that lesson of our Lord 
which tells us, ^ In your patience ye shall possess 
your souls,^ and that too of most blessed Paul, ^ In all 
things let us shew forth ourselves as the ministers of 
God, in much patience/ But much patience is 
assured in this, if much longsuffering bears with 
much gentleness much that opposes and thwarts. 
For patience without longsuffering will not be much, 
but short ; and without gentleness will merely not 
exist.'^ So said, Hugh Gerard and old Ainard (a man 
of immense age and curious story) set out to the king. 
They were all received like angels, with honour, 
polite speeches, excuses, instant promises, but neither 
cash nor certain credit. Then Gerard fumed and 
forgot the advice of his superior, and broke out into 
a furious declaration that he was off and quit of Eng- 
land, and would go back to his Alpine rocks, and not 
conflict with a man who thought it lost labour to be 
saved. ^' Let him keep the riches he loves so well. 
He will soon lose them, and leave them to some un- 
grateful heir or other. Christ ought not to share in 
them ; no, nor any good Christian.'^ These, and 
harsher words, too, were Gerard^s coaxes. Poor 
Hugh used often, in after life, to remember them 
with horror. He got red and confused. He told his 
brother to speak gentlier, to eschew such terms, or 
even to hold his tongue : but Gerard (of holy life, 
grey head, and gentle blood) scolded on without 
bridle. Henry listened in a brown study. Neither 
by look, nor word, did he appear hit. He let the 
monk rate, kept silence and self control, and when 



30 HUGH, BISHOP OF LINCOLN 

the man had talked himself out, and an awkward 
silence reigned, he glanced at Hugh's confused and 
downcast face. ^' Well, good man,'' he said, ^^ and 
w^hat are you thinking about within yourself ? You 
are not preparing to go off too, and leave our kiag- 
dom to us, are you ? " The answer came humbly 
and gently, but with perfect manliness. ^' I do not 
despair of you so far, my lord. I am rather sorry for 
all your hindrances and business, w^hich block the 
salutary studies of your soul. You are busy, and 
when God helps, we shall get on well with these 
health-giving projects." Henry felt the spell at 
once ; flung his arms round Hugh, and said wdth an 
oath, ^^ By my soul's salvation, while I live and 
breathe, thou shalt never depart from my kingdom. 
With thee I will share my life's plans, and the need- 
ful studies of my soul." The money was found at 
once, and a royal hint given. The demon blood of 
the Angevins, w^hich frightened most men, and kept 
Henry in loneliness, had no terrors for Hugh ; and 
Henry could hardly express the pleasure he felt in 
a rare friendship which began here. He loved and 
honoured no other man so much, for he had found a 
man who sympathised with him without slavishness, 
and whose good opinion was worth having. This 
close friendship, combined with physical likeness, 
made it generally believed that Hugh was Henry's 
own son. Hugh did not always agree w^ith the king, 
and if he felt strongly that any course was bad for 
king and kingdom would say so roundly in direct 
words of reproof, but withal so reasonably and 
sweetly that he made ''the rhinoceros harrow the 
valleys " after him, as his biographer quaintly puts it, 



PRIOR HUGH 31 

glancing at Job. The counsel was not limited to 
celestial themes. Hugh checked his temper, softened 
his sentences, and got him to do good turns to 
churches and religious places. He unloosed the king^s 
rather tight list, and made him a good almsgiver. One 
offence Hugh was instant in rebuking — the habit of 
keeping bishoprics and abbacies vacant. He used 
also to point out that unworthy bishops were the 
grand cause of mischiefs in God's people, which mis- 
chiefs they cherished, caused to wax and grow great. 
Those who dared to promote or favour such were 
laying up great punishments against the Doomsday. 
^'What is the need, most wise prince, of bringing 
dreadful death on so many souls just to get the 
empty favour of some person, and the loss of so many 
folk redeemed by Christ's death ? You invoke God's 
anger, and you heap up tortures for yourself here- 
after." Hugh was for free canonical election, with 
no more royal interference than was required to 
prevent jobbery and quicken responsibility. 

The two friends visited each other often, and the 
troubles of Henry's last years were softened for him 
by his ghostly friend. It is quite possible that Hugh's 
hand may be traced in the resignation of Geoffrey 
Plantagenet, the king's dear illegitimate son, who was 
(while a mere deacon) bishop-elect of Lincoln from 
1 173 to 1 181. From the age of twenty to twenty-eight 
he enjoyed the revenues of that great see without con- 
secration. The Pope objected to his birth and his 
youth. Both obstacles could have been surmounted, 
but Geoffrey resigns his claims in the Epiphany of 
the latter year, and gets a chancellorship with iive 
hundred marks in England and the same in 



32 HUGH, BISHOP OF LINCOLN 

Normandy. His case is a bold instance of ^4hat 
divorce of salary from duty" which even in those 
times was thorougly understood. 

There is a story, one might almost say the usual 
story, of the storm at sea. The king with a fleet is 
between Normany and England, when a midnight 
storm of super-Virgilian boisterousness burst upon 
them. After the manner of Erasmus' shipwreck, every 
one praj^s, groans, and invokes both he and she saints. 
The king himself audibly says, ^ Oh, if only my 
Charterhouse Hugh were awake and instant at his 
secret prayers, or if even he were engaged with the 
brethren in the solemn watch of the divine offices, 
God would not so long forget me.'^ Then, with a 
deep groan, he prayed, ^^ God, whom the William 
Prior serves in tiaith, by his intervention and 
merits, take kindly pity upon us, who for our 
sins are justly set in so sore a strait." Needless 
to say the storm ceased at once, and Henry felt 
that he was indeed upon the right tack, both nauti- 
cally and spiritually. Whatever view we take of this 
tale (storms being frequent, and fervent prayers of 
the righteous avaihng much), the historic peep into 
King Henry's mind is worth our notice. The sim- 
plicity and self-abasement of his ejaculation shew a 
more religious mind than some would allow to him. 

Anyhow, the prior was hard at work. He soon 
transformed the ^* weeps '^ into stone. He built the 
two houses, the friary for the lay brethren and the 
monastery for the monks. He prayed, read, medi- 
tated and preached. His body slept, but his heart 
woke, and he repeated '^ Amens " innumerable in his 
holy dreams. On feast days, when the brethren 



PRIOR HUGH 33 

dined together, he ate with them, and then he had 
the meal sauced with reading. If he ate alone, he had 
a book by his trencher of dry bread rarely garnished 
with relishes. A water pot served him for both flagon 
and tureen. He allowed himself one little human en- 
joyment. A small bird called a burnet made friends 
with him and lived in his cell, ate from his fingers and 
his trencher, and only left him at the breeding season, 
after which it brought its fledged family back with it. 
This little friend lived for three years with the prior, 
and to his great grief came no more in the fourth. 
The learned have exhausted their arts to discover 
what a burnet can be, and have given up the chase. 
Some would have him to be a barnacle goose, others 
a dab-chick or coot — none of which can fairly be 
classed as aviciilce small birds. Burnet is brown or 
red brown, and rather bright at that. We have it in 
Chaucer^s ^^ Romaunt of the Rose '^ [4756] : 

" For also vvelle vvole love be sette 
Under ragges as rich rochette, 
And else as wel be amourettes 
In mournyng blak, as bright biirnettes." 

Consequently if the reader likes to guess (in default 
of knowledge) he might do worse than think of the 
Robin Redbreast as a likely candidate. He is called 
in Celtic Broindeag, is a small, friendly, crumb-eating, 
and burnet bird, and behaves much as these ancient 
legends describe. The name burnet still survives in 
Somerset. 

Not only the burnet bird felt the fascination 
of the prior, but monks drew towards Witham 
and men of letters also. Men of the world would 

4 



34 HUGH, BISHOP OF LINCOLN 

come to be taught the vanity of their wisdom ; clergy 
whose dry times afflicted them found a rich meal of 
Witham doctrine well worth the spare diet of the 
place. The prior by no means courted his public, 
and the Order itself was not opened at every knuckle 
tap. Even those who were admitted did not always 
find quite what they wanted. We read of one man, 
a Prior of Bath, w^ho left the Charterhouse because 
he ^^ thought it better to save many souls than one,^^ 
and returned to what we should call parish work. 
Alexander of Lewes, a regular Canon, w^ell versed in 
the quadriviiim (arithmetic, geometry, music, and 
astronomy), found the solitude intolerable to his 
objective wats. He w^as not convinced of the higher 
spirituality of co-operative hermitages. He found it 
too heavy to believe that there was no Christendom 
outside the Charterhouse plot, and no way of salvation 
except for a handful of mannikins. Alexander, with 
stinging and satiric terms, left in a huff, followed by 
acrimonious epithets from his late brethren. He 
became a monk at Reading, and filled a larger part 
upon a more spacious stage, and yet would have most 
gladly returned ; but the strait cell was shut to him 
relentlessly and for ever. Andrew, erst sacristan 
of Muchelney, was another who left the Order for 
his first love, but his dislike of the life was less 
cogently put. It was not exactly that the prior 
could not brook opposition : but he hated a man 
who did not know his own mind, and nothing would 
induce him to allow an inmate who eddied about. 

The Charterhouse now had ecclesiastical inde- 
pendence. The bishop^s powder ended outside its 
pale, Bruton Convent could tithe the land no more, 



PRIOR HUGH 35 

nor feed their swine or cattle there, nor cut fuel, 
instead of which the rectory of South Petherton, and 
its four daughter chapelries, was handed over to this 
bereaved convent. This was in April, 1181. This 
transaction was some gain to the game-loving king, 
for the Withamites ate neither pork nor beef, and 
so the stags had freer space and more fodder. 

But nevertheless the monks^ poverty was almost ludi- 
crous. Hugh wanted even a complete and accurate 
copy of the scriptures, which he used to say were the 
solitary's delight and riches in peace, his darts and 
arms in war, his food in famine and his medicine in 
sickness. Henry asked why his scribes did not make 
copies. The answer was that there was no parch- 
ment. ^^ How much money do you want ? '^ asked 
the king. ^^One silver mark,'' was the ungrasping 
request. Henry laughed and ordered ten marks to 
be counted out and promised a complete ^' divine 
library" besides. The Winchester monks had just 
completed a lovely copy (still in existence). King 
Henry heard from a student of this fine work and 
promptly sent for the prior. With fair words and 
fine promises he asked for the Bible. The embarrassed 
monk could not well say no, and the book was soon 
in Hugh's hands. This Prior Robert shortly after 
visited Witham and politely hoped the copy was 
satisfactory. If not, a better one could be made, for 
great pains had been taken by St. Swithun's brethren 
to make this one agreeably to their own use and 
custom. Hugh was astonished. ^^ And so the king 
has beguiled your Church thus of your needful 
labour ? Believe me, my very dear brother, the 
Library shall be restored to you instantly. And I 



36 HUGH, BISHOP OF LINCOLN 

beg most earnestly through you that your whole 
fraternity will deign to grant pardon to our humility 
because we have ignorantly been the occasion of this 
loss of their codex.'' The prior was in a fright, as 
well he might be, at the shadow of the king's wrath. 
He assured Hugh that his monks were all delighted 
at the incident. ^^To make their delight continue, 
we must all keep quiet about the honest restoration 
of your precious work. If you do not agree to take 
it back secretly, I shall restore it to him who sent it 
hither ; but if you only carry it off with you, we shall 
give him no inkling of the matter.'' So the Winchester 
monks got back their Bible, and Witham got the said 
Prior Robert as one of its pupils instead, fairly cap- 
tured by the electric personality of the Carthusian. 

Though Hugh's influence was very great, we must 
not quite suppose that the king became an ideal 
character even under his direction. There is an 
interregnum not only in Lincoln but in Exeter 
Diocese between Bishop Bartholomew and John 
the Chaunter, ii 84-11 86 ; one in Worcester betw^een 
the translation of Baldwin and William de Northale, 
1184-1186 ; and a bad one in York after the death of 
Roger, 1 181, before King Richard appointed his half- 
brother Geoffrey aforementioned, who was not 
consecrated until August, 1191. But Hugh's chief 
work at Witham was in his building, his spiritual 
and intellectual influence upon the men he came to 
know, in the direction of personal and social holiness : 
and, above all, he was mastering the ways and works 
of England so sympathetically that he was able to 
take a place afterwards as no longer a Burgundian 
but a thorough son of the nation and the church. 



PRIOR HUGH 37 

One instance may be given of his teaching and its 
wholesome outlook. He lived in an age of miracles, 
when these things were demanded with an insatiable 
appetite and supplied in a competitive plenty which 
seems equally inexhaustible, almost as bewildering to 
our age as our deep thirst for bad sermons and 
quack medicines will be to generations which have 
outgrown our superstitions. St. Hugh had drunk so 
deeply and utterly and with all his mind of the gravity 
and the humility which was traditional from the 
holy authors of the Carthusian Order, that ^^ there 
was nothing he seemed to wonder at or to wish to 
copy less than the marvels of miracles. Still, when 
these were read or known in connection with holy 
men, he would speak of them gently and very highly 
respect them. He would speak of them, I say, as 
commending of those who showed them forth, and 
giving proof to those who marvelled at such things, 
for to him the great miracle of the saints was their 
sanctity, and this by itself was enough for guidance. 
The heartfelt sense of his Creator, which never failed 
him, and the overwhelming and fathomless number 
of His mighty works, were for him the one and all- 
pervading miracle. ^^ If we remember that Adam, 
his biographer, wrote these words not for us, but for 
his miracle-mongering contemporaries, they will seem 
very strong indeed. He goes on to say that all the 
same, whether Hugh knew it or not, God w^orked 
many miracles through him, as none of his intimates 
could doubt, and we could rather have wished that 
he had left the saint's opinion intact, for it breathes 
a lofty atmosphere of bright piety, and is above the 
controversies of our lower plane. 



38 HUGH, BISHOP OF LINCOLN 

The time was now coming when Witham had to 
lose its prior. Geoffrey (son, not of fair Rosamond, 
but of Hickenay) had resigned in January, 1182. 
After sixteen months' hiatus, Walter de Coutances, 
a courtier, was elected, ordained, and consecrated, 
and enthroned December, 1183 ; but in fifteen months 
he was translated to the then central See of Rouen 
and the wretched diocese had another fifteen months 
without a bishop, during which time (April 15, 1185, 
on holy ^Monday) an earthquake cracked the cathedral 
from top to bottom.^ 

In May, 1186, an eight-day council was held at 
Eynsham, and the king attended each sitting from 
his palace at Woodstock. Among other business 
done was the election, not very free election, to 
certain bishoprics and abbeys. Among the people 
who served or sauntered about the Court w^ere the 
canons of Lincoln, great men of affairs, learned, and 
so wealthy that their incomes overtopped any bishop's 
rent-roll, and indeed they affected rather to despise 
bishoprics — until one offered. The See of Lincoln 
had been vacant (with one short exception) for nearly 
eighteen years. It contained ten of the shires of 
England — Lincoln, Leicester, Rutland, Northampton, 
Huntingdon, Cambridge, Bedford, Buckingham, 
Oxford, and Hertford. The canons chose three 
men, all courtiers, all rich, and all wxll beneficed, 
viz., their dean, Richard Fitz Neal, a bishop's 
bastard, who had bought himself into the treasurer- 
ship ; Godfrey de Lucy, one of their number, an 

' The king crossed to Normandy the very next day, and it 
is possible that this was the date of the sea scene mentioned 
above. 



PRIOR HUGH 39 

extravagant son of Richard the chief justice ; and 
thirdly another of themselves, Herbert le Poor, 
Archdeacon of Canterbury, a young man of better 
stuff. But the king declared that this time he 
v^ould choose not by favour, blood, counsel, prayer, 
or price ; but considering the dreadful abuses of the 
neglected diocese he wished for a really good bishop, 
and since the canons could not agree he pressed 
home to them the Prior of Witham, the best man 
and the best-loved one. With shouts of laughter 
the canons heard the jest and mentioned his worship, 
his habit, and his talk, as detestable ; but the king's 
eye soon changed their note, and after a little 
foolishness they all voted for the royal favourite. 
The king approves, the nobles and bishops applaud, 
my lord of Canterbury confirms, and all seems 
settled. The canons rode off to Witham to explain 
the honours they have condescended to bestow upon 
its prior. He heard their tale, read their letters. 
Then he astonished their complacency by telling 
them that he could understand the king's mind in 
the matter and that of Archbishop Baldwin, himself 
a Cistercian ; but that they, the canons, had not acted 
freely. They ought to chose a ruler whose yoke and 
ways they could abide, and, moreover, they ought 
not to hold their election in the Court or the ponti- 
fical council, but in their own chapter. ^^ And so, to 
tell you my small opinion, you must know that I hold 
all election made in this way to be absolutely vain 
and void." He then bade them go home and ask for 
God's blessing, and choose solely by the blessing 
and help of the Holy Ghost, looking not to king's, 
bishop's, nor any man's approval. ^' That is the only 



40 HUGH, BISHOP OF LINCOLN 

answer to return from my littleness. So go, and 
God's good angel be with j^ou.'^ They begged him 
to reconsider it, to see the king or the archbishop ; 
but the prior was inflexible, and they left the Guest 
House in wonder not unmixed with delight. The 
king's man was not the pet boor they had taken him 
for, but single-eyed, a gentleman, a clever fellow, 
and a good churchman. The very men who had 
cried out that they had been tricked now elected 
him soon and with one consent ; and off they post 
again to Witham. 

This time he read the letters first, and then heard 
their tale and expressed his wonder that men so wise 
and mannerly should take such pains to court an 
ignoramus and recluse, to undertake such unwonted 
and uncongenial cares, but they must be well aware 
that he was a monk and under authority. He had 
to deal not w^ith the primate and chief of the English 
Church in this matter, but with his superior overseas, 
and so they must either give up the plan altogether 
or undertake a toilsome journey to the Charterhouse ; 
for none but his own prior could load his shoulders 
with such a burden. In vain they argued. A strong 
embassy had to be sent, and sent it was without 
delay, and the Chartreuse Chapter made no bones 
about itf but charged brother Hugh to transfer his 
obedience to Canterbury ; and thus the burden of 
this splendid unhappy See was forced upon the 
shoulders which were most able to bear the weight 
of it. 

One would be glad to know what Henry thought 
of it all, and whether he liked the tutoring his 
courtiers got and were about to get. The humour. 



PRIOR HUGH 41 

shrewdness, tact, and piety combined must have 
appealed to his many-sided mind and now saddened 
heart. He had lost his heir and was tossed upon 
stormy seas, so perhaps he had small leisure to spare 
for the next act of the drama. 



CHAPTER IV 

THE BISHOP ELECT AND CONSECRATE 

HUGH knew well enough what the Chartreuse 
Chapter would say if the English meant to 
have him, and so he began his preparations at once. 
Other men fussed about line copes, chasubles, and 
mitres, and dogged the clerical tailors, or pottered 
about in goldsmiths' shops to get a grand equipment 
of goblets. To him the approaching dignit)' was 
like a black cloud to a sailor, or a forest of charging 
lances to the soldier under arms. He fell hard to 
prayer and repentance, to meditation upon the 
spiritual needs of his new duties, lest he should 
have holy oil on his head and a dry and dirt}' con- 
science. He gave no time to the incnu of the 
banquet, to the dehcacies, the authorities, and the 
lacquey-smoothed amenities of the new life. He 
was racked with miser}' at the bare imagination of 
the fruitless trouble of palace business exchanged for 
the fruitful quiet of his cell. He feared that psalms 
would give way to tussles, holy reading to cackle, 
inward meditation to ugly shadows, inward purity to 
outer nothingness. His words to the brethren took 
a higher and a humbler tone, which surprised them, 

42 



THE BISHOP ELECT AND CONSECRATE 43 

for even they were used to see bishoprics looked 
upon as pkims, and sought with every device of 
dodgery. Yet here was a man who could keep his 
soul unhurt and cure the hurts of others, yet whose 
cry was, '' In my house is neither bread nor clothing ; 
make me not a ruler of the people.'^ St. Augustine's 
fierce words upon the Good Shepherd and the hire- 
ling were in his mind. ^^ The soul's lawful husband 
is God. Whoso seeks aught but God from God is no 
chaste bride of God. See, brothers, if the wife loves 
her husband because he is rich she is not chaste. 
She loves, not her husband, but her husband's gold. 
For if she loves her husband she loves him bare, she 
loves him beggared." So Hugh prepared his soul as 
for a bridal with the coming bridegroom. 

When the inevitable command came, more than 
three months after his first election, he meekly set 
out for his duties at ^^ the mount of the Lord, not 
Lebanon,^ but Lincoln." He was white in dress, 
white in face, but radiant white within. He sat a 
horse without trappings, but with a roll of fleece and 
clothes, his day and night gear. Around him pricked 
his clergy upon their gold-buttoned saddles. They 
tried various devices to get his bundle aw^ay to carry 
it upon their own cruppers, but neither jest nor 
earnest could unstrap that homely pack. The truth 
was that he would not allow himself to change his 
old simple habits one jot, lest he should develop the 
carnal mind. So they drew across Salisbury Plain 
and on to Marlborough. Here was the Court and a 
great throng, and this public disgrace of the pack 
was too much for the Lincoln exquisites. They cut 
' The white. 



44 HUGH, BISHOP OP LINCOLN 

the straps of the objectionable bundle and impounded 
it. From Marlborough the cavalcade rode into 
London, and Hugh was consecrated on Sunday, 
September 21 (Feast of St. Matthew, the converted 
capitalist), 1186. King Henry w^as in fine feather, 
and, forgetting his rather near habits, produced some 
fine gold plate, a large service of silver, a substantial 
set of pots and pans, and a good sum of ready 
money to meet the expenses of the festive occasion. 
Without some such help a penniless Carthusian could 
hardly have climbed up that Lebanon at all, unless 
by the sore scandal of a suit to the Lincoln Jewry. 
This handsome present was made at Marlborough. 
William de Northalle was consecrated Bishop of 
Worcester on the same day, of whom nothing else 
transpires than that he died not long after, and is 
supposed to have been an old and toothless bishop 
promoted for his ready fees. The place of consecra- 
tion was Westminster Abbey, in its prae-Edwardian 
state, and so no longer extant. 

Hugh would undoubtedly sleep in the house in 
which he afterwards died. This lay at the back of 
Staple Inn, where the new^ bursar, whom the king 
had given him, bestowed the royal pots and crocks. 
Consecration like necessity brings strange bed- 
fellows, and plain, cheap-habited Hugh, by gaudily 
trimmed William in his jewelled mitre, must have 
raised a few smiles that Sunday morning. 

Hugh's delays had ended with his prior's order, 
and he saw nothing now to stay his journey north- 
wards. With him rode Gilbert de Glanville, Bishop of 
Rochester, a malleus nionachorum^ a great hammerer 
of monks, and perhaps told off for the duty of 



THE BISHOP ELECT AND CONSECRATE 45 

enthroning the new bishop to silence those who 
had a distaste for all monkery. Herbert le Poor, 
late rival candidate for the See, also pranced along- 
side with all the importance of a great functionary, 
whose archidiaconal duty it was to enthrone all 
bishops of the Province of Canterbury. For this 
duty he used to have the bishop's horse and trap- 
pings and much besides ; but alas ! the new man slept 
at St. Catherine's Priory on Michaelmas Eve and 
walked upon his bare toes to the cracked cathedral 
next morning. When he was fairly and ceremonially 
seated the archdeacon held out his practised palm 
for the customary fee (archdeacons are still fee- 
extracting creatures). He was astonished to hear the 
radical retort, ^^ What I gave for my mitre '^ (it was a 
very cheap one) ^^ that and no more will I give for 
my throne.^' Both Herbert and with him Simon 
Magus fell backward breathless at this blow.^ But 
Hugh had a short way of demolishing his enemies, 
and the archdeacon appears hereafter as his stout 
follower knocked, no doubt, into a friend. All who 
were present at this ceremony had their penances 
remitted for thirteen days. Two other incidents are 
recorded of this time. One is that the bursar asked 
how many small fallow deer from the bishop's park 
should be killed for the inauguration feast. ^^ Let 
three hundred be taken, and if you find more wanted 
do not stickle to add to this number." In this answer 
the reader must not see the witless, bad arithmetic of 
a vegetarian unskilled in catering, but a fine deter- 
mination, first to feed all the poor folk of his metro- 
polis with the monopolies of princes ; and secondly, 
^ He was acting by a Canon of 1138, passed at Westminster. 



46 HUGH, bishop of Lincoln 

to sever himself wholly and dramatically from the 
accursed oppression of the game and forest laws. 
When Hugh told the story at Court it served as a 
merry jest, often broken, no doubt, against game 
(but not soul) preserving prelates, but, as the sequel 
shows, there was method in it. The other incident 
is that in the convent after Matins, on the morning 
of his enthronement, he slept and heard a voice 
which comforted his doubtful heart, too fearful lest 
this step should not be for the people's health or his 
own. ^' Thou hast entered for the waxing of thy 
people, for the waxing of salvation to be taken with 
thy Christ." 

The new bishop hved at his manor at Stowe (of 
which part of the moat and a farmhouse are now to 
be seen by the curious), a place parked and ponded 
cleliciously. Almost as soon as he was installed a 
new swan came upon the waters, huge and flat- 
beaked, with yellow fleshings to his mandibles. This 
large wild bird dwarfed the tame swans into geese 
by comparison, and no doubt tame swans and geese 
were small things in those days compared to our 
selected fatlings. This bird drove off and killed the 
other swans, all but one female, with whom he com- 
panied but did not breed. The servants easily caught 
him and brought him to the bishop's room as a 
wonder. The beast-loving man, instead of sending 
him to the spit, offered him some bread, which he 
ate, and immediately struck up an enthusiastic friend- 
ship with his master, caring nothing for any throngs 
about him. After a time he would nestle his long 
neck far up into the bishop's wide sleeve, toying with 
him and asking him for things with pretty httle 



THE BISHOP ELECT AND CONSECRATE 47 

clatterings. The bird seemed to know some days 
before he was due that he was coming, for it flapped 
about the lake and made cries. It would leave the 
w^ater and stalk through the house walking wide in 
the legs. It would neither notice nor brook any 
other man, but rather seemed jealous, and would hiss 
and flap away the rest of the company. If the bishop 
slept or watched, the swan would keep dogs and 
other animals at bay. With true spiritual instinct 
it would peck hard at the calves of chaplains. If 
the bishop was abed no one was allowed near him 
without a most distressing scene, and there was no 
cajoling this zealous watchman. When the bishop 
went away the bird would retire to the middle of its 
pool, and merely condescend to take rations from the 
steward ; but if its friend returned it would have 
none of servants. Even two years^ interval made no 
difference to the faithful swan. It prophetically pro- 
claimed his unexpected arrival. When the carts and 
forerunners arrived (with the household stuffs) the 
swan would push boldly in among the crowd and 
cry aloud with deHght when at last it caught the 
sound of its master^s voice, and it would go with him 
through the cloister to his room, upstairs and all, and 
could not be got out without force. Hugh fed it with 
lingers of bread he sliced with his own hand. This 
went on for nearly all Hugh's episcopate. But in his 
last Easter the swan seemed ill and sullen, and kept 
to his pond. After some chase they caught him in 
the sedge, and brought him in, the picture of unhappi- 
ness, with drooping head and trailing wing, before 
the bishop. The poor bird was to lose its friend six 
months after, and seemed to resent the cruel severance 



48 HUGH, BISHOP OF LINCOLN 

of coming death, though it was itself to Hve for many 
a day after its master had gone home to his rest. 
There, floating conspicuous on the lake, it reminded 
orphaned hearts of their innocent, kind, and pure 
friend who had lived patiently and fearlessly, and 
taken death with a song — the new song of the 
Redeemed. 

The first act of the new bishop was naturally to 
enlist captains for the severe campaign, and he ran 
his keen eye over England and beyond it for wise, 
learned, and godly men who could help a stranger. 
He wrote a touchingly humble letter to Archbishop 
Baldw^in to help him to find worthy right-hand men, 
^' for you are bred among them, you have long been 
a leader, and you know them ^inside and under 
the skin,^ as the saying goes.^' Baldwin, an Exeter 
labourer by birth, by turns a schoolmaster, arch- 
deacon, Cistercian abbot. Bishop of Worcester, 
and primate — a silent, dark, strong man, gentle, 
studious, and unworldly — was delighted at the request. 
He sent off Robert of Bedford, an ardent reformer 
and brilliant scholar, and Roger Roldeston, another 
distinguished scholar, who afterwards was Dean of 
Lincoln. These, Hke Aaron and Hur, upheld the 
lawgiver's hands, and they, with others of a like 
kidney, soon changed the face of affairs. Robert 
died early, but Roger was made Archdeacon of 
Leicester, confessor, and at the end executor to the 
bishop. After gathering captains the next thing w^as an 
eight-fold lash for abuses — decrees (i) against bribes ; 
(2) against vicars who w^ould not sing Mass save for 
extra pay ; (3) against swaggering archdeacons who 
suspended churches, and persons beyond their beat. 



THE BISHOP ELECT AND CONSECRATE 49 

These gentlemen, in the absence of a bishop, seem 
to have grown into popes at the least. (4) Mass not 
to be laid as a penance upon any non-priestly person. 
This was a nimble way by which confessors fined 
penitents to their own profit. (5) Annual and other 
customary masses to be said without temporal gain. 
(6) Priestly administration only to be undertaken by 
those who are proved to be duly ordained by the 
archbishop or one of his suffragans : forged orders 
being plentiful. (7) Incumbents lo be tonsured, and 
clergy to wear ^' the crown '^ instead of love-locks. 
(8) Clergy not to sue clergy in ecclesiastical cases 
before civil justices, Erastian knaves being active, even 
then. 

Next year brought a much more fighting foe, 
Godfrey the chief forestar. There was a Forest 
Assize only three years back, and a great outbreak 
of game preserving, dog licensing, bow confiscating, 
fines, imprisonment and slaughter, new rights for 
old tyrants, boys of twelve and clergy to be sworn to 
the hunting peace, mangling of mastiffs, banishment 
of tanners and parchmenters from woodlands — and 
if this was within the law, what could not be done 
without the law by these far away and favoured 
gamekeepers ? The country groaned. Robbers and 
wolves could easily demolish those whom the 
foresters did not choose to protect, and the forest 
men went through the land like a scourge. Some 
flagrant injustice to one of Hugh's men brought 
down an excommunication upon Godfrey, who 
sent off to the king in fury and astonishment ; 
and Henry was in a fine fit of anger at the news, 
for the Conqueror long ago had forbidden un- 

5 






so HUGH, BISHOP OF LINCOLN 

authorised anathemas against his men. Certain 
courtiers, thinking to put Hugh in the way of obliging 
the king, suggested that a vacant prebend at Lincohi 
should be given to one of themselves. The king sent 
a letter to that effect, which he did with some 
curiosity, suggesting this tit for tat. The messengers 
jingled through Oxford from Woodstock and found 
the bishop at Dorchester touring round his weedy 
diocese, who addressed the expectant prebendary 
and his friends with these words : '^ Benefices are 
not for courtiers but for ecclesiastics. Their holders 
should not minister to the palace, revenue, or treasury, 
but as Scripture teachers to the altar. The lord king 
has wherewdth to reward those who serve him in his 
business, w^herewith to recompense soldiers' work in 
temporals with temporals. It is good for him to 
allow the soldiers of the highest King to enjoy 
what is set aside for their future necessities and not 
to agree to deprive them of their due stipends.' ' 
With these words he unhesitatingly sent the courtiers 
empty and packing. The fat was in the fire, and the 
angry courtiers took care that the chimney should 
draw. A man galloped off to say ^' Come to the king 
at once," and when the bishop was ' nearing 
Rosamond's bower, the king and his nobles rode off 
to the park, and sat down in a ring. The bishop 
followed at once. No one repHed to his salute, or 
took the least notice of him. He laid hands upon a 
great officer next the king and moved him and sat 
down, in the circle of black looks. Then the king 
called for a needle. He had hurt one of his left 
fingers, and he sewed a stall upon it. The bishop 
was practised in silence, and was not put out by it. 



THE BISHOP ELECT AND CONSECRATE 5 1 

At last he said gently, ^^ You are very like your 
relatives in Falaise.'^ Henry threw himself back 
and laughed in a healthy roar. The courtiers who 
understood the sarcasm were aghast at its audacity. 
They could not but smile, but waited for the king, 
who, when he had had his laugh out, explained the 
allusion to the Conqueror^s leather dressing and 
gloving hneage. ^^ All the same, my good man, you 
must say why you chose, without our leave, to put 
our chief forester under the ban, why moreover you 
so flouted our Httle request that you neither came in 
person to explain your repulse nor sent a polite 
message by our messengers.^^ Hugh answered 
simply that he knew the king had taken great trouble 
about his election, so it was his business to keep the 
king from spiritual dangers, to coerce the oppressor 
and to dismiss the covetous nonsuited. It would be 
useless and stupid to come to court for either matter, 
for the king^s discretion was prompt to notice proper 
action and quick to approve the right. Hugh was 
irresistible. The king embraced him, asked for his 
prayers, gave the forester to his mercy. Godfrey 
and his accomplices were all publicly flogged and 
absolved, and the enemy, as usual, became his faith- 
ful friend and supporter. The courtiers ceased to 
act like kites and never troubled him again. On the 
contrary, some of them helped him so heartily that, 
if they had not been tied by the court, he would have 
loved to have beneficed them in the diocese. But 
non-residence was one of the scandals of the age and 
Hugh was inflexible in this matter. Salary and 
service at the altar were never to be parted. Even 
the Rector of the University of Paris, who once said 



52 HUGH, BISHOP OF LINCOLN 

how much he would hke to be associated with 
Lincohi by accepting a canonry, heard that this 
would also be a great pleasure to the bishop, ^' if only 
you are willing to reside there, and if, too, your 
morals will keep pace with your learning.^' The 
gentleman was stricter in scholarship than in life, but 
no one had ever taken the liberty to tell him of it, 
and he is said to have taken the hint. Herein Hugh 
was quite consistent. He would not take any amount 
of qtiadrivium as a substitute for honest living, and 
next after honest Hving he valued a peaceable, meek, 
conformist spirit, which was not always agape for 
division and the sowing of discords. He took some 
pains to compose quarrels elsewhere, as for instance, 
between Archbishop Baldwin and the monks of 
Canterbury. The archbishop wished to found a 
house of secular canons at Hackington in honour of 
SS. Stephen and Thomas of Canterbury. The 
monks were furious ; the quarrel grew. Hugh 
thought and advised, when asked, that the question 
of division outweighed the use of the new church, 
and that it would be better to stop at the onset than 
to have to give up the finished work. But, objected 
Baldwin, holy Thomas himself wanted to build this 
church. '^ Let it suflice that you are like the martyr 
in proposing the same. Hear my simplicity and go 
no further.'^ He preached union with constant 
fervour, and used to say that the knowledge that his 
spiritual sons were all at his back made him fear 
neither king nor any mortal, ^' neither do I lose the 
inward freedom from care, which is the earnest of, 
and the practice for, the eternal calm. Nor do my 
masters (so he called his canons) break and destroy a 



THE BISHOP ELECT AND CONSECRATE 53 

quiet that knows no dissent, for they think me gentle 
and mild. I am really tarter and more stinging than 
pepper, so that even when I am presiding over them 
at the chapter, the smallest thing fires me with anger. 
But they, as they ought, know their man of their 
choice and bear with him. They turn necessity into 
virtue and give place to me. I am deeply grateful to 
them. They have never opposed a single word of 
mine since I first came to five among them. When 
they all go out and the chapter is over, not one of 
them, I think, but knows I love him, nor do I believe 
I am unloved by a single one of them.^^ This fact and 
temper of mind it was which made it possible to 
work the large diocese, for, of course, the bishop did 
not act in any public matter without his clergy. But 
personally his work was much helped by his self- 
denial and simplicity of his life. He never touched 
flesh but often used fish. He would drink a little 
wine, not only for health, but for company's sake. He 
was a merry and jest-loving table companion, though 
he never was undignified or unseemly. He would 
allow tumblers and musicians to perform at banquets, 
but he then appeared detached and abstracted rather 
than interested ; but he was most attentive when 
meals were accompanied by readings about martyrs' 
passions, or saints' lives, and he had the scriptures 
(except the four gospels, which were treated apart) 
read at dinner and at the nightly office. He found 
the work of a bishop obhged him to treat that 
baggage animal, the body, better than of yore. His 
earlier austerities were avenged by constant pains in 
the bowels and stomach troubles, but in dedications 
of churches, ordinations, and other offices he would 



54 HUGH, BISHOP OF LINCOLN 

out-tire and knock up every one else, as he went'f rom 
work to work. He rose before dawn and often times 
did not break his fast till after midday. In hot 
summer weather, he would oblige his ministers 
(deacon, sub-deacon, acolytes, &c.) to take a little 
bread and wine lest they should faint at the solemn 
Mass. When they hesitated, he upbraided them 
with want of faith and of sense, because they could 
not obey orders or see the force of them. When he 
journeyed and crowds came to be confirmed them- 
selves or to present their little ones, he would get off 
his horse at a suitable spot and perform that rite. 
Neither tiredness, weakness, haste, rough ground, nor 
rain would induce him to confirm from the saddle. A 
young bishop afterwards, with no possible excuse, 
would order the frightened children up among restive 
horses. They came weeping and whipped by 
insolent attendants at no small risk — but his lordship 
cared nothing for their woe and danger. Not so dear 
Father Hugh. He took the babes gently and in due 
order, and if he caught any lay assistants troubhng 
them would reproach them terribly, sometimes even 
thrashing the rascals with his own heavy hand. Then 
he would bless the audience, pray for the sick, and 
go on with his journey. 

He was passionately fond of children, not only 
because they were innocent, but because they were 
young : and he loved to romp with them — anticipa- 
ting by nearly seven centuries the simple discovery 
of their charm, and he would coax half words of 
wondrous wit from their little stammering lips. 
They made close friends with him at once, just as 
did the mesenges or blue tits who used to come 



THE BISHOP ELECT AND CONSECRATE $5 

from woods and orchards of Thornholm, in Lindsey, 
and perch upon him, to get or to ask for food. ^ 

There is a story of a six months' old infant which 
jumped in its mother's arms to see him, waved its 
armlets, wagged its head, and made mysterious 
wrigglings (hitherto unobserved by bachelor monks) 
to greet him. It dragged his hand with its plump 
palm to its mouth as if to kiss it, although truth 
compels biographer Adam to acknowledge the kiss 
was but a suck. ^^ These things are marvellous and 
to be deeply astonished at,'' he says. Hugh gave the 
boy apples or other small apposites (let us hope it 
was not apples, or the consequences of such gross 
ignorance would be equally marvellous), but the child 
was too interested in the bishop to notice the gifts. 
The bishop would tell how while he was still Prior 
he once went abroad to the Carthusian Chapter and 
stopped with brother William at Avalon. There his 
nephew, a child who could not even speak, was laid 
down upon his bed and (above the force of nature) 
chuckled at him — actually chuckled. Adam expected 
these two to grow up into prodigies and heard good 
of the latter, but the former he lost sight of — a little 
low-born boy in Newark Castle. Hugh used to put 
his baby friends to school when they grew older. 
Benedict of Caen was one of these, and he sHpped off 
Roger de Roldeston's horse into a rushing stream, 
but was miraculously not drowned : and Robert of 
Noyon was another whom he picked up at Lambeth 
in the archbishop's train and put to school with the 
nuns at Elstow. 

' Thornholm is near Appleby, and is a wooded part of the 
county even to this day. 



56 HUGH, BISHOP OF LINCOLN 

These tender passages are to be contrasted with 
quite other sides to the man. Once an old rustic 
arrived late for a roadside confirmation. The bishop 
was in the saddle and trotting off to another place 
near, w^hen the old fellow bawled after him that he, 
too, wished to be bishopped. Hugh more than once 
bade him hurry w^ith the rest to the next place, but 
the man sat plump on the ground and said it was the 
bishop^s fault and not his if he missed that Grace. 
The prelate looked back, and at last pulled up, turned 
his horse, rode back, and was off saddle again, and 
had the rite administered swiftly ; but having laid 
holy hands upon him, he laid also a disciplinary one, 
for he boxed the old fellow's ears pretty smartly, 
which spanking some would have us to believe was a 
technical act of ritual, a sort of accolade in fact. The 
same has been suggested about the flogging of 
forester Godfrey ; for the mere resonance of these 
blows it seems, is too much for the tender nerves of 
our generation. Another bumpkin with his son once 
ran after the bishop's horse. The holy man 
descended, opened his chrism box, and donned his 
stole, but the boy had been confirmed already. The 
father wanted to change the boy's name ; it would 
bring him luck. The bishop, horrified at such paganism, 
asked the boy's name. When he heard that it was 
John he was furious. ^' John, a Hebrew name for 
God's Grace. How dare you ask for a better one ? 
Do you want him called ^ hoe ' or ^ fork ' ? For your 
foolish request, take a year's penance, Wednesday's 
Lenten diet and Friday's bread and water." ^ 

' From this and from various incidental remarks it may be 
concluded that Hugh knew Hebrew, which is not remarkable, 



THE BISHOP ELECT AND CONSECRATE 57 

He was hardly abreast of his very legal time in 
reverence for the feudal system. One of his tenants 
died and his bailiffs seized the best thing he had, to 
wit, an ox, as heriot due to the lord. The poor 
widow in tears begged and prayed for her ox back 
again, as the beast was breadwinner for her young 
children. The seneschal of the place chimed in, 
^^ But, my lord, if you remit these and similar legal 
dues, you will be absolutely unable to hold the land 
at all.^^ The bishop heard him and leapt from his 
horse to the ground, which was very muddy. He 
dug both hands into the dirt. ^^ Now I have got 
the land,'^ he said, ^^ and yet I do remit the poor little 
woman her ox," and then he flung the mud away, 
and lifting his eyes added, '^ I do not want the land 
down here ; I want heaven. This woman had only 
two to work for her. Death has taken the better one 
and are we to take the other ? Perish such avarice ! 
Why, in the throes of such wretchedness, she ought 
to have comfort much rather than further trouble." 
Another time he remitted ^5 due from a knighf s 
son, at his father^s death, saying it was unjust and 
mischievous that he should lose his money because 
he had lost his father too. ^^ He shall not have 
double misfortune at any rate at our hands." Even 
in the twelfth century piety and business sometimes 
clashed. 

Hugh had not been enthroned a year, when 
Christendom was aghast and alarmed at the news 

because the learned just then had taken vigorously to that tongue 
and had to be restrained from taking lessons too ardently in the 
Ghetto. Some of his incidental remarks certainly did not come 
from St. Jerome, the great cistern of mediaeval Hebrew. 



S8 HUGH, BISHOP OF LINCOLN 

from the East. Saladin with eighty thousand men 
had met the armies of the Cross at Tiberias (or 
Hittin), had slaughtered them around the Holy Rood 
itself, in the Saviour's own country, had beheaded all 
the knights of the Temple and the Hospital who 
would not betray the faith. Jerusalem had fallen, 
and Mahomet was lord of the holy fields. ^^ The 
rejoicing in hell was as great as the grief when 
Christ harrowed it,'' men said. The news came in 
terrible bursts ; not a country but lost its great ones. 
Hugh Beauchamp is killed, Roger Mowbray taken. 
The Pope, Urban HI., has died of grief. The 
Crusade has begun to be preached, Gregory VIII. 
has offered great indulgences to true penitents and 
believers w^ho will up and at the Saracens. He bade 
men fear lest Christians lose what land they have 
left. Fasting three days a week has been ordered. 
Prince Richard has the cross (and is one, to his 
father). Berter of Orleans sings a Jeremiad. Gilbert 
Foliot (foe to St. Thomas) is dead. Peace has been 
made between France of the red cross and England 
of the white, and Flanders of the green. King 
Henry has ordered a tax of a tenth, under pain of 
cursing, to be collected before the clergy in the 
parishes from all stay-at-homes. Our Hugh is not 
among the bishops present at this Le Mans 
proclamation. The kingdom is overrun, in patches, 
wdth tithe collectors. Awiul letters come from 
Christian remnants, but still there is no crusade ; 
France and England are at war. The new Pope is 
dead. Now old Frederick Barbarossa is really off 
to Armenia. Prayers and psalms for Jerusalem fill 
the air. The Emperor is drowned. Archbishop 



THE BISHOP ELECT AND CONSECRATE 59 

Baldwin and Hugh of Durham, notwithstanding, 
quarrel with their monks. Scotland is always in a 
tangle. Great King Henry, with evil sons and failing 
health, makes a sad peace in a fearful storm, learns 
that son John too has betrayed him, curses his day and 
his sons, and refuses to withdraw his curse, dies at 
Chinon before the altar, houselled and anhealed, on 
the 6th of July, 1189. But when dead he is 
plundered of every rag and forsaken. 

That last Ascension, Pentecost and Trinity, Hugh 
had been abroad with the poor king, and had been 
the only bishop who insisted upon keeping his 
festivals with full sung Mass and not a hasty, low 
Mass. 

Hugh de Nonant, the new bishop of Coventry, one 
Confessor's Day had begun saying the introit, when 
his Lincoln namesake lifted up his voice and began 
the long melic intonation. ^' No, no, we must haste. 
The king has told us to come quickly,'^ said the 
former. The answer was, '' Nay, for the sake of the 
King of kings, who is most powerfully to be served, 
and whose service must bate nothing for worldly 
cares, we must not haste but feast on this feast,'^ and 
so he came later, but missed nothing. Before the 
king died Hugh had gone back to his diocese again, 
and heard the sorrowful news there. 



CHAPTER V 



THE BISHOP AT WORK 



HENRY was dead before his friend was three 
years a bishop, and with him died Hugh's 
hopes of better men on the bench, for Richard's 
bishops were treasurers, justiciars and everything but 
fathers of their dioceses. Tall, blue-eyed, golden- 
haired Richard the Viking, had a simple view of his 
father's Empire. It was a fine basis for military 
operations. ^ He loosed some of the people's 
burdens to make them pay more groats. He 
unlocked the gaols. He made concessions to 
France and Scotland. He frowned upon the Jews, 
a frown which only meant that he was going to 
squeeze them, but which his people interpreted into 
a permission to wreak their hatred, malice, and 
revenge upon the favoured usurers. 

The massacre of Jews which began in London and 
finally culminated in the fearful scenes of York, 
spread to other parts and broke out in place after place. 
In Lent (1190) the enlisting for the crusade was going 
on in Stamford. The recruits, '^ indignant that the 
enemies of the Cross of Christ who lived there should 

' Plato's Aristocrat has a son, who is a great timocrat. 

60 



THE BISHOP AT WORK 6l 

possess so much, while they themselves had so Uttle 
for the expenses of so great a journey," rushed upon 
the Jews. The men of Stamford tried to stop the riot, 
but were overcome, and if it had not been for the 
Castle the Jews would have been killed to a man. 
Two of the plunderers fell out over the booty. One, 
John by name, was killed, martyred it w^as supposed. 
The old women had dreams about him. Miracles 
began. A shrine was set up and robber John began 
to develop into Saint John. Then down came the 
bishop, scattered the watchers and worshippers, 
hacked down the shrine and forbade any more such 
adoration of Jew-baiting thieves, with a thundering 
anathema. The Lincoln people next began the same 
game, but they did not reckon with the new warden, 
Gerard de Camville, who had bought the revenues 
and provided a harbour there for the Israehtes. We 
may believe that the bishop also was not behind 
hand in quelling such bloody ruffianism, for the Jews 
were afterwards very conspicuous in their grief at his 
death, evidently owing him something. 

King Richard, athirst for adventure, sold all that 
he could, taxed all that he could, and then set off for 
the crusade, carrying with him Baldwin the gentle 
archbishop, who was to die in despair at the gross 
habits and loose morals of the crusading hosts. He 
left behind him brother John, whom he had tried to 
bribe into fidelity, and a little lame, black foreigner, 
Longchamp, Bishop of Ely, who had been adviser, 
schemer, general brain box and jackal to the Lion- 
heart, and who now swept through England with a 
thousand knights, trying cleverly and faithfully to 
rule the restive EngHsh and to keep them in some 



62 HUGH, BISHOP OF LINCOLN 

order and loyalty, in his ill-bred, active way. But the 
whole position was impossible and more impossible, 
first, because of John the always treasonable ; and 
secondly, because of Walter, late Bishop of Lincoln 
and now of Rouen (the Pilate or Pilot ?) whom 
Richard sent to guard the guardian. Geoffrey, half 
brother to the king, next came upon the scenes as a 
new complication. He had been made Archbishop 
of York and overlord of Durham. Black William's 
sister Richenda seized this archbishop and im- 
prisoned him : and then Hugh joined the anti- 
Longchamp party, sided actively with John and with 
Gerard de Camville, who was beseiged in Lincoln. 
Hugh excommunicated Richenda. His influence 
turned the scale against Longchamp. 

It would require a treatise in itself to unfold all the 
tangled story of the first half of Richard's reign till 
the king returned to England after war, prison, and 
heavy ransom, in March 1194. Practically, at this 
date the Bishop of Lincoln disappears as much as 
possible from political life ; or at least tried to do so. 
He was building the cathedral and doing his duty as 
bishop, befriending the needy and the outcast, and 
showing himself the enemy of wrong-doers. Now 
we hear of him clipping the love locks of his young 
sacristan Martin, who straightway became a monk ; 
now following in the steps of great St. Martin by 
some passionate acts of pity, and now retiring mostly 
in harvest time (when all hands are busy and all 
hearts are out of reach) to his beloved Witham for a 
month's retreat. 

Of course all devout people in the Middle Ages 
had an especial care for lepers because of that most 



THE BISHOP AT WORK 63 

fortunate mistranslation in Isaiah liii. 4. which 
we render ^^ we did esteem Him stricken/^ but which 
the Vulgate renders piitavinius cum quasi leprosum : we 
did esteem Him as it were a leper. Hence service 
to lepers was especially part of service to Christ. At 
Maiden Bradley, in Somerset, was a colony of leprous 
sisters ; and at Witham Church a leper window 
looked towards their house. At Lincoln ^ was the 
Hospital of the Holy Innocents called La Malandrie. 
It was founded by St. Remigius, the Norman 
cathedral builder, with thirteen marks revenue and 
further endowed by Henry L and Henry II. The 
condition of all these leper outcasts was more than 
miserable. The disease was divided into the 
breeding, full and shipwreck periods. When the 
first was detected the patient was led to church, 
clothed in black, Mass and Matins for the dead 
were said over him, earth was thrown upon his foot, 
and then he was taken to a hovel on waste land 
where he w^as to be buried at the last. Here he 
found a parti-coloured robe, a coat, two shirts, 
a rattle, knife, staff, copper girdle, bed, table, and 
lamp, a chair, chest, pail, cask and funnel, and this 
was his portion for ever. He was not before 
1 179 allowed even a leprous priest to say Mass for 
him. The disease rotted away his flesh till he died, 
limbless or faceless in fearful shipwreck, and un- 
houselled. These wretches this bishop took under 
his peculiar care. He would wash them with his 
own hands, as his mother did before him, kiss them, 

^ *' South-east of the Great Bar Gate, between that and the 
Httle Bar Gate in the north-west angle of the Great South 
Common." 



64 HUGH, BISHOP OF LINCOLN 

serve them with meat, drink, and money. He would 
have thirteen together in his room, if he could find 
that number. He maintained many, both men and 
women. He would go to the Malandry, stop in a 
cell there, accompanied by a few of his devoutest 
and closest friends, and cosset the lepers motheringly, 
telling them they were desolate and afflicted only to 
be rewarded for ever, persuading them to a holy life 
with his pitjdng words, reproving them for their evil 
deeds (and many lepers were horribly immoral) ; but 
before ever he talked to them he kissed the men, 
embracing longer and more lovingly those who were 
worst smitten. The swelled, black, gathered, de- 
formed faces, eyeless or lipless, were a horror to 
behold, but to Hugh they seemed lovely, in the body 
of their humiliation. Such he said were happy, were 
Paradise flowers, great crown gems of the King 
Eternal. He would use these as a text and speak of 
Christ^s compassion to the wretched, Christ who now 
took ulcerous Lazarus by angels to Abraham's bosom 
and now became weak with our weakness. ^' Oh, how 
happy they were who were close about that so sweet 
man as his friends ! Whatever his foot trod upon, 
or any part of him had touched, or his hands had 
handled, it would be sweet indeed to me, to devour 
with kisses, to put to my eyes, to bury in my very heart 
if I could. What of this superfluous humour, if one 
may use the word of what flowed from the tree of 
life ? What am I to feel of that humour which used 
to be poured from a vase of such blessing because 
He bare our infirmity? Why, of course, if I only 
could, I should diligently gather Him, yes, and drain 
Him with my Hps, drink Him in iwith my jaws, and 



THE BISHOP AT WORK 6$ 

hide just Him in my inward parts. Those are the 
really wretched, who fear aught else than to offend 
One so sweet. Those are the pitiful who esteem 
aught else sweet, or seek aught else than sweetly to 
cleave to this sweet One and sweetly obey Him. I 
do not know what he can feel to be bitter, who with 
the inner palate of the heart has learnt by continuous 
meditation to feed on the sweetness of this Sweet." 
Thus inspired, he looked upon the weaker limbs of 
Christ, honouring those whom others passed by. 

Not only was he bountiful to lepers, but what with 
the alms asked of him and given by a hand that often 
outran the tongue of need, he gave away a third of all 
he had in this way alone. Once at Nev/ark he met a 
leper and kissed him. There a most learned Canon 
from Paris, William de Montibus, a great master and 
author, an early Cruden, and the Chancellor of the 
Diocese, said to him, ^^ Martin's kiss cleansed the 
leper." The bishop answered humbl}^, ^* Martin 
kissed the leper and cured his body, but the leper's 
kiss has cured my soul." 

Of Hugh's courage several instances are cited (but 
impossible now to date). He went several times 
unarmed against threatening bands of men who 
flourished naked swords. In Lincoln Church, in 
Holland as aforementioned, and in Northampton, he 
faced angry clerks and laymen, knights and men at 
arms, and burgesses with equal vigour, and excom- 
municated them. It is not unUkely that the lirst 
was in defence of the Jews, and the third when he 
stopped the worship of a thief at the last place. The 
second may have been when he placed himself 
among the enemies of Longchamp. 

6 



66 HUGH, BISHOP OF LINCOLN 

He was believed, and he believed himself, to be 
able to cause death to those whom he excommuni- 
cated. This was so firmly acknowledged that it saved 
him in many a severe pinch, and shielded him from 
indifference, beggary, and defeat. Many instances 
are given us, in which misfortune and death followed 
upon his censures. If any one likes to plead post hocj 
non ergo propter IioCj judgment may go by default ; 
but at any rate the stories show the hfe of the time 
most vividly, and the battle for righteousness which 
a good bishop had to wage. 

There lived at Cokewald an oldish knight, Thomas 
de Saleby, whose wife Agnes was barren. WilUam, 
his brother, also a knight, but of Hardredeshill, was 
the heir to the estate. Dame Agnes detested 
William and schemed to disappoint him. She gave 
out that she was with child. William disbelieved, 
consulted friends, but could find no remedy. About 
Easter, 1194, the lady affected to be confined, A 
baby, Grace by name, was smuggled mto the room, 
and sent back to its mother to be suckled. Outwitted, 
William went off in distress to the bishop, who sent 
for Sir Thomas, in private, charged him, and tried to 
make him confess. But he, ^^ fearing the scoldings 
of his too tongue-banging wife more than God^s 
justice, and being, moreover, spell-bound by her 
viperine hissings," affected utter innocence. The 
bishop plied him vigorously, urging public opinion 
and his own old weak state. At last he promised that 
he would go home and talk with Agnes, and report the 
next day, and if he found these things so, would obey 
orders. ^^ Do so," said the bishop, ^' but know that 
if you bate your promise, the sentence of excom- 



THE BISHOP AT WORK 67 



munication will strike solemnly and fearfully all the 
doers and abetters of this wrong.^^ But Agnes^ 
tongue outdid the bishop^s, and Thomas sulked 
indoors. The bishop preached about this in pubhc, 
on the Easter Monday, and said it was a sin unto 
death. He then knotted the cord of anathema round 
the daring conspirators. Satan was soon up and at 
Thomas. He wrenched away the soul of the 
unhappy knight, who had gone to bed to escape 
the worry, and there died a sad example to wife-ruled 
husbands. Agnes, however, defied them all and 
braved out her story ; and here is the crux : the 
infant was legally legitimate because Thomas had 
acknowledged it to be such. King Richard allowed 
little Grace, aged four, to be betrothed to Adam, a 
brother of Hugh de Neville, his chief forestar. Hugh, 
who was always at war with child marriages, issued 
a special caveat in this case. But when he was away 
in Normandy they found a priest (a fool or bribed) 
to tie the knot. The priest was suspended and the 
rest excommunicated. In the next act the chamber- 
maid confessed ; and lastly Agnes' nerve gave way, 
and she did the same. But Adam still claimed the 
lands, won a suit in London, although William bid 
five hundred marks against him, and died drunk at 
an inn, with his baby bride. Hugh's comment was 
that '' the name forestar is right and aptly given, for 
they will stand far from the kingdom of God." But 
the little heiress was again hunted into marriage, this 
time by a valet of John's, Norman of the chamber, 
who bought her for two hundred marks. He died, 
and the little girl was sold for three hundred marks to 
Brien de Insula, a man known to history. Grace at 



68 HUGH, BISHOP OF LINCOLN 

the last died childless, though she seems to have been 
a pious wife ; and Saleby came back at the last to 
William's long defrauded line. 

Yet another forestar also under ban found some 
men in his forest cutting brush-wood, handled them 
insolently and was cut to pieces and stuck together 
again with twigs and left at the cross roads. 

Again a deacon, Richard de Waure, quarrelled with 
a knight, Reginald de Argentun, and maliciously 
accused him of treason. The bishop forbade the 
suit, but the deacon danced off to my lord of Can- 
terbury, Hubert the Justiciar, who was the real 
King of England and one of the ablest men the 
country had to serve her. He felt it right that the 
suit should continue. Hugh declared that he had 
acted as Justiciar, not as Metropolitan, and suspended 
Richard, who again went off to Hubert and got 
the sentence relaxed, and boasted that he was free 
from Lincoln jurisdiction. Hugh simply added ex- 
communication to the contumacious deacon. Again 
the archbishop loosed, and Hugh bound. ^^^If a 
hundred times you get absolved by the lord arch- 
bishop, know that w^e re-excommunicate you a 
hundred times or more, as long as we see you so 
all too hardened in your mad presumption. It is 
evident what you care for our sentence. But it is 
utterly fixed and settled.'' Then the deacon hesitated, 
but before he could make up his mind his man 
cracked open his head with an axe. 

Then again there was a girl at Oxford, who, backed 
by a Herodias mother, left her husband for another 
love. The husband appealed to the bishop, who told 
her to go back. She kept repeating that she would 



THE BISHOP AT WORK 69 

sooner die. Hugh tried coaxing. He took her 
husband's hand and said, ^^ Be my daughter and 
do Vv^hat I bid you. Take your husband in the 
kiss of peace with God's benison. Otherwise I will 
not spare you, be sure, nor your baneful advisers." 
He told the husband to give her the kiss of peace. 
But when he advanced to do so the hussey spat in 
his face near the altar (of Carfax) and before many 
reverend fathers. With a fearful voice the bishop 
said, '^You have eschew^ed the blessing and chosen 
the curse, Lo ! the curse shall catch you.'' He 
gave her a few days' respite and then pronounced 
the curse. ^^ She was suffocated by the enemy of 
mankind, and suddenly changed lawless and vanish- 
ing pleasures for unending and just tortures," says 
the unhesitating scribe. 

Once a Yorkshire clerk was turned out of his 
benefice by a knight (who was in our sense also a 
squire) simply that the gentleman might clap in his 
brother. The poor parson appealed to Courts 
Christian and Courts Civil, but found his enemy 
was much too favoured for him to effect anything. 
He tried Rome, but, poor Lackpenny, got what he 
might have expected from that distant tribunal. In 
his distress he turned to the chivalrous Bishop of 
Lincoln. Now, Hugh had no business at all to 
meddle with Archbishop Geoffrey Plantagenet's 
diocese, but it was a case of ^^ Who said oppression ? " 
He banned the obtruding priest by name and all his 
accomplices. Some died, some went mad or blind. 
Thus William got his own again, for, as all who 
knew expected, Hugh's anathema meant repentanc 
or death. 



70 HUGH, BISHOP OF LINCOLN 

These anecdotes explain much that follows, and 
not a little the great strain that there was between 
Archbishop Hubert Walter and the Bishop of Lincoln. 
Perhaps this strain was bound to be felt, because the 
policy of the former was to employ churchmen 
largely in political and secular affairs, the policy of 
the other to exclude them as much as possible. In 
the abstract we can hardly think that it is w^ell that 
priests should rule the State or bishops manipulate 
the national finances. But to lay down that rule at 
the close of the twelfth century was to cut the spine 
between the brains of the State and its members. 
Hugh, perhaps, allowed too little for the present 
distress ; Hubert for the distant goal. Anyhow they 
colhded. 

Hubert, in his capacity of financial viceroy, the 
moment Richard had come back from captivity, 
been re-crowned, and gone off again, sent off the 
visiting justices to look after various pleas of the 
Crown, among which was a question of defaults. 
These gentlemen began their milking process in 
September, 1194. It w^as discovered that an old 
tribute of an expensive mantel had been paid in 
times past by Lincoln See to the King. This pall 
was a matter of 100 marks (say ;^2,ooo of our money). 
In the long vacancy and under Bishop Walter there 
had been no payment, and the royal claim was for 
a good many years back, there being apparently 
some limitations. Arrears of 1,000 marks were de- 
manded, or a lump sum of 3,000 to have done 
with the tribute. Hugh thought it an unworthy 
and intolerable thing that our Lady^s Church and 
he, as its warder, should be under tribute at all, 



THE BISHOP AT WORK 7 1 

and he was prepared to do anything to end the 
*^ slavery/^ However Uttle we can share this notion, 
at least it was a generous one. The demand came 
after the Saladin taxes, the drain for the Crusade, 
for the king^s ransom, and during the building of 
the cathedral. It came to a man who gave a third 
of his money in alms and who lived from hand to 
mouth, often borrowing on his revenues before he 
got them. He proposed to meet this new huge 
call by retiring to Witham and devoting the whole 
emoluments of the See to redeeming this fictitious 
mantel. But the clergy, who knew by experience 
both order and chaos, rose in arms, and monastic 
advisers added their dissuading voices. Well might 
the clergy support their bishop. They had in times 
past paid for the king's mantel with episcopal trim- 
mings, and other prelates had not scorned a little 
cabbage over this rich tailoring. Richard cynically 
expected that Hugh would do the same, but his 
clergy knew him better. They offered to find the 
money. But Hugh, though he allowed them to do 
so, would not allow one fruitful vein to be worked. 
He absolutely forbade penance fines, lest, for money's 
sake, the innocent should be oppressed and the 
guilty be given less pains than were needed. Some 
folk told the bishop that rascals had more feeling 
in their purses than in their banned souls or banged 
bodies. He replied that this was because their 
spiritual fathers laid on too lightly upon the sinners. 
^^ But,'' they pleaded, ^^ Thomas the Martyr, of most 
blessed memory, fined sinners." Hugh answered, 
^^ Believe me, it was not on that head that he was 
a saint. Quite other virtue merits marked him a 



y2 HUGH, BISHOP OF LINCOLN 

saint ; by quite another story he won the meed of 
martyr pahn/' 

Hubert must have felt it more of a financial than 
a moral victory when the 3,000 marks cHnked in the 
treasurer's box. 

The next battle between these two doughty men 
(or shall we say systems of thought ?) was fought 
about Eynsham Abbey. Old Abbot Geoffrey died, 
and at his election the Abbey had been under the 
See of Lincoln ; but since then King Henry had 
claimed the gift of abbacies, a claim his son was 
not likely to bate. A suit with the Crown, Hugh's 
friends argued, was hopeless or not worth the 
trouble ; but this argument seemed sacrilegious to 
the intrepid bishop. What ? Allow God and the 
Queen of Heaven to be robbed ? Who ever agreed 
to let Lincoln be so pilled ? He is but a useless and 
craven ruler who does not enlarge instead of lessen 
the dignities and liberties of the Holy Church. He 
went stoutly to the contest, crossed and recrossed 
the sea, and at last persuaded a sort of grand jury 
of twenty-four clerks and laymen that he was the 
patron. In a year's time he won his case and saw 
Robert of Dore, a good abbot, well in his chair. 
Hugh spent a week with his almost bereft family, 
gave the new man a fine chased silver and ivory 
crook and a great glorious goblet, and amplified 
the place with a generous hand. 

This was a legal triumph for the bishop, but surely 
it w^as a moral triumph for the Curia Regis to do 
ample justice to a strong opponent of the Crown ? 
Of course, nobody wanted another St. Thomas 
episode again, least of all enacted against a man 



THE BISHOP AT WORK 73 

who carried the Church of England with him, as 
St. Thomas, Hving, never did ; but Hugh had small 
favour with the king at this time. By these suc- 
cessive battles the Bishop of Lincoln had come to 
be looked upon as the leader of the Church and the 
cham_pion of her liberties. To us those ^^ liberties'^ 
seem a strange claim, beyond our faith and our ken, 
too. It seems obvious to us that m.en, whether clerks 
or laymen, who eat, drink, w^ear, build, and possess 
on the temporal plane, should requite those who 
safeguard them in these things with tribute, honour, 
and obedience ; and freedom from State control in 
things temporal seems like freedom to eat buns 
without paying the baker. Free bilking, free 
burgling, and so on, sound no less contradictory. 
But the best minds of England seven centuries ago 
dreamed of another citizenship and a higher, of 
which the Church was the city — a city not future 
only and invisible, but manifest in their midst, which 
they loved with passion and were jealous over, too 
exclusively perhaps, but in the event not unwisely. 
It is less difficult for us to see that any cause which 
would set the unselfish and lofty-minded men of that 
time against the preponderating power of the Crown 
made for the welfare and peace of the country in the 
future. The anarchy of Stephen's reign, Henry's 
mastery, and Richard's might, with Hubert Walter's 
genius, resulted in a dangerous accumulation of 
power that did actually prove almost disastrous to 
the State. Consequently Bishop Hugh's greatest 
contest with the Crown demands the sympathy both 
of men who still dream of the spiritual city in (but 
unsoiled by) hands of mortals, and also of those who 



74 HUGH, BISHOP OF LINCOLN 

value constitutional liberties in modern politics. The 
war with France kept Richard active abroad. The 
flow of money from England was too thin to enable 
him to strike the final blow he wished to strike. 
Hubert Walter's power was so hampered he could 
do little beyond scutages, but in December, 1197, he 
called together a Council at Oxford. He told this 
universal assembly of the barons of all England that 
the king was in straits. He was outclassed and 
outmanned and like to be even dispossessed by a 
most powerful and determined enemy. He asked 
their deliberations as to help for the king in his 
difficulties. Oxford was the king's birthplace and 
was also in Lincoln diocese.^ The Court party, who 
advocated abject submission to the king's becks, at 
once proposed that the barons of England, among 
whom were the bishops, should furnish three hundred 
knights to the king, which knights should serve for 
a year without furlough. The Bishop of Lincoln's 
consent was asked, and he made no reply at first, 
but turned it over in his mind. The archbishop, 
of course, spoke for the motion. Richard FitzNigel, 
Bishop of London, a man of finance, purchase, and 
political sagacity, one of the historians of the time, 
assured them that he and his would try every fetch 
to relieve the royal need. This brought up Hugh in 
an instant. **You, wise and noble gentlemen here 
before me, know that I am a stranger in this country 
of yours and was raised to a bishop's office from a 
simple hermit life. So when the Church of my 
Lady Mary the Holy Mother of God was handed 

* Perhaps for both reasons chosen as the trysting-place. 



THE BISHOP AT WORK 75 

over to my inexperience to rule I applied myself to 
explore its customs, dignities, dues, and burdens. 
For near thirteen years, up till now, I have not trod 
out of the straight tracks of my forerunners. I 
know the Lincoln Church is bound to furnish 
military service for the King, but only in this 
country. Beyond the bounds of England none 
such is due from her. Hence I think it would be 
wiser for me to foot it back to my native soil and 
till the wilderness in my wonted w^ay, rather than 
bear a bishopric here, lose the ancient immunities 
of the Church entrusted to me, and subject her to 
unprecedented vexations.'^ This answer the arch- 
bishop took very ill. His voice choked, his lips 
quivered. He took up the tale, however, without 
comment, and asked Herbert le Poor, Bishop of 
Salisbury, the very man who, as Archdeacon of 
Canterbury, had been snubbed for simony at Hugh's 
installation, and who might be expected to render 
a public nothing now for his then empty hand. But 
he had learnt something since that day, and he 
replied curtly that he could give no other answer 
than that of my lord of Lincoln, unless it were to 
the enormous prejudice of his Church. Then the 
archbishop blazed into fury. He loosed many a 
bitter shaft against Bishop Hugh. He broke up 
the assembly and told the king who it was had 
made the whole matter to miscarry. Two and even 
three postmen were sent off to lash the Lion into 
frenzy, and Richard ordered all that the bishop 
had to be confiscated as soon as possible, Herbert, 
the seconder, had the same sentence, and was soon 
Poor in estate as well as name, and only got peace 



^6 HUGH, BISHOP OF LINCOLN 

and possession back after injuries, losses, vexings, 
and many insults. But no man laid a finger even 
upon the most trumpery temporal of the Bishop of 
Lincoln. His anathema meant death. For nine 
months Richard hounded his minions on, but they 
dared not bite. Instead they beseeched the bishop's 
pity for their unhappy position, and he resolved to 
seek the king and talk him over. He had no friend 
at Court to prepare his way. Fine old WilHam Earl 
Marshall and the Earl of Albemarle tried to stop 
him or to make some way for him ; but he did not 
allow them to sacrifice themselves, but sent w^ord to 
the king that he was coming. Two things had 
happened since that December. Innocent III. had 
become Pope — the Augustus of the papal empire, 
and he was already acting most vigorously and 
unhesitatingly. Secondly, Hubert Walter had re- 
signed, because the Pope took Lincoln views of 
bishops being judges, councillors, treasurers, and 
the like. These things made Hugh's chances more 
favourable. Richard's wrath, too, was a straw fire, 
and it had time to cool, and cooled quicklier because 
it had shocked his English subjects. Moreover, 
though highly abominable as he considered the 
Bishop's checkmate, he had got the cash after all 
by breaking the great seal and having a new one 
made, which necessitated a new sealing of all old 
parchments, and royal wax is dear to this day. It 
would, therefore, not be amiss to smoothe those 
EngHsh who were smarting at the broken seal and 
broken faith. Hugh's chances, then, were not quite 
desperate, although he had been able to stop the 
mouth of the Lion for nine whole months by his 



THE BISHOP AT WORK yy 

intrepidity, fame, and the help of heaven. The 

rest of the story, which is given minutely, gives 

one a little vi^indow into the times hard to equal 
for its clearness. 



CHAPTER VI 

IN TROUBLES — 

THE king had before this time noticed a spot of 
immense mihtary importance on the Seine 
between Rouen and Paris, the rock of Andelys, 
Indeed he had once tossed three Frenchmen from 
the rock. It was, or might be, the key to Normandy 
on the French side, and he feared lest PhiHp should 
seize upon it and use it against him. Consequently 
he pounced upon it, and began to fortify it at lavish 
expense. Archbishop Walter of Rouen, and late of 
Lincoln, in whose ecclesiastical patrimony it lay, was 
furious, and obtained an Interdict, and Philip was 
chafed too/ The former was appeased by the gift 
of Dieppe, and the latter left to digest his spleen as 
best he might. The work was just about finished 
in May when a shower of red rain fell, to the horror 
of all except the dauntless king, who ^' would have 
cursed an angel '^ who had told him to desist from 
this his great delight. Here it was that the king lay 
waiting for the truce with France to expire. 

' *' I will take it, though it were built of iron," he said ; to which 
Richard replied, " And I will defend it, though it were of 
butter." 

78 



IN TROUBLES— 79 

The bishop arrived at the Rock castle in the 
morning of St. Augustine^s day (Aug. 28th). The 
king was in the chapel hearing Mass, and thither the 
bishop followed him, and straightway saluted him. 
Now the king was in the royal dais, near the outer 
door. Two bishops were standing just below him. 
(We must think of something like a small upstair 
college chapel for the theatre of this tale.) These 
two were old Hugh Pudsey, Bishop of Durham, and 
young Eustace, Bishop of Ely : the former a generous, 
loose-handed, loose-living old gentleman, the latter 
Longchamp^s successor, a great scholar and revenue 
officer. Hugh looked past the shoulders of these 
two and saluted again. The king glared at him for 
a few seconds and then turned his face. The 
unabashed bishop put his face nearer : ^^ Give me 
the kiss, lord king.^^ The king turned his face 
further away, and drew his head back. Then the 
bishop clutched the king's clothes at the chest, 
vigorously shook them, and said again, '^ You owe me 
the kiss, for I have come a long way to you.'' The 
king, seemingly not astonished in the least, said, 
^^ You have not deserved my kiss." The strong hand 
shook him still harder, and across the cape which he 
still held taut, the bold suppliant answered confidently, 
^^ Oh yes, I have deserved it. Kiss me." The king, 
taken aback by this audacious importunity, smiled 
and kissed him. Two archbishops (Walter of Rouen 
most likely being one) and five other bishops were 
between the royal seat and the altar. They moved 
to make room for their uncourtly brother. But he 
passed through their ranks and went right up to the 
horn of the altar, fixed his looks firmly on the ground, 



8o HUGH, BISHOP OF LINCOLN 

and gave his whole attention to the celebration of the 
Divine mysteries. The king could hardly take his 
eyes off the bishop all through the service. So they 
continued until the threefold invocation of the Lamb 
of God that taketh away the sins of the world. Then 
the celebrant, the king's chaplain, gave the kiss of 
peace to a certain foreign archbishop, whose business 
it was, by court custom, to bring it to the king. 
Richard came from his place right up to the altar 
steps to meet him, received '^ the sign of the peace 
which w^e get from the sacriiice of the Heavenly 
Lamb,'' and then with humble reverence yielded the 
same to the Bishop of Lincoln by the kiss of his 
mouth. This respectful service, which the other 
archbishop was making ready to receive, as the 
custom was, and to pass on himself, was thus given 
direct to the holy man. The king stept quickly 
up to him, when Hugh was expecting nothing of the 
sort, but was wrapt in prayer.^ 

When the Mass was over, Hugh w^ent to the king 
and spoke a few strong words of remonstrance 
against his unjustifiable anger, and explained his own 
innocence. The king could answer nothing to the 
purpose, but said that the Archbishop had often 
written suspicious suggestions against him. The 
bishop soon showed that these were groundless, and 
added, ^^ God's honour apart, and the salvation of 
your soul and mine, I have never opposed your 
interests even in the least degree." The king 
immediately asked him to come next day to the 
recently constructed castle of Chateau Gaillard, and 

^ There is no osculatory to be found in the records. This is a 
sHghtly later invention, and no one seems to kneel in this picture. 



IN TROUBLES — 8 1 

ordered the bishop to be given a big Seine pike, 
knowing that he would not eat meat. But before 
they left the chapel Hugh gripped him by the hand 
and led him from his high seat to a place near the 
altar. There he set him down and sat beside him. 
^^ You are our parishioner, lord king ^^ (he was born 
in Oxford), ^^ and we must ansv/er at the tremendous 
judgm.ent of the Lord of all for your soul, which He 
redeemed with His own blood. So I wish you to 
tell me how stands it with your soul in its inner 
state ? so that I may be able to give it some effectual 
counsel and help, as the Divine breathing shall 
direct. A whole year has gone by since I last spoke 
with you.^^ 

The king answered that his conscience was clear, 
nearly in everything, except that he was troubled by 
hatred against the enemies whom he was apt to find 
doing him wrong, and wickedly attacking him. The 
reply was, ^^ If in all things you please the grace of 
the Ruler of all, He will easily appease your enemies 
or give them into your hand. But you must beware 
with all your might, that you are not living against 
the laws of your Maker in any way (and God forbid 
you should) or even doing any wrong to your 
neighbours. The Scripture says that ^ When a man's 
ways please the Lord, He maketh even his enemies to 
be at peace with him.^ On the other hand it says of 
others, ^ The world shall fight with him, against the 
unwise,' and again the holy man saith of the Lord, 
^ Who hath hardened himself against Him and hath 
prospered ? ' 

^^ Now there is a public report of you, and I grieve 
to say it, that you neither keep faithful to the 

7 



82 HUGH, BISHOP OF LINCOLN 

marriage bed of your own wife, nor do you guard 
untouched the privileges of churches, especially in 
providing and choosing their rulers. Yes, it is said, 
and a huge piece of villainy it is, that moved by 
money or favour, you are used to promote some to 
the rule of souls. If this is true, then without any 
doubt, peace cannot be granted to you by God.'' 
When he had given this careful and timely admoni- 
tion and instruction, the king excused himself on 
some points, on others asked earnestly for the 
bishop's intercession, and was sent off with a 
blessing. The bishop then went in gladness to his 
pike. Richard's opinion was that ^' if all the other 
bishops were like him, no king or prince would dare 
to rear his neck against them." Such salutary 
treatment now-a-days is the sole perquisite of the 
very poor. The higher up men get on the social 
scale, the less they need such honest dealing, it now 
appears. 

But Hugh was not quite out of the toils. The 
king's counsellors suggested that he should carry 
back letters to the barons demanding aid and 
succour, letters which it was known would be well 
weighted by the authority of the postman, and 
w^ould ensure their bearer continuance of the royal 
favour. The king's servants informed the bishop of 
this move, and his clerkly friends pointed out the 
great advantage to himself of this service. He 
answered : " That be far from me. It jumps neither 
with my intention nor my office. It is not my part 
to become the carrier of letters royal. It is not my 
part to co-operate in the least degree in exactions of 
this sort. Do not you know that this mighty man 



IN TROUBLES— 83 

begs as it were with a drawn sword ? Particularly 
this power (of the Crown), under guise of asking, 
really forces. Our English first attract with their 
gentle greetings, and then they force men with 
harshest compulsion to pay not what is voluntary 
but just what they choose to exact. They often 
compel unwilling folk to do w^hat they know was 
once done spontaneously, either by this generation 
or the last. I have no cause to be mixed up in such 
dealings. These may please an earthly king at one^s 
neighbour's expense, but afterwards they move the 
indignation of Almighty God.'' He asked the 
counsellors to arrange that this burden should not 
be laid upon him with its consequent refusal, con- 
flict, and disfavour. Richard heard the tale and sent 
a message, ^' God bless you, but get away home, and 
do not come here to-morrow as we said, but pray for 
us to the Lord without ceasing," which message was 
most grateful to the bishop, and he soon set his face 
north. His exultant chaplains felt sure that all 
would turn out well, for on the steps of the chapel, 
when their hearts were all pit-a-pat, they had 
heard the chorus prose of St. Austin being 
chaunted, ^^ Hail, noble prelate of Christ, most lovely 
flower," a lucky omen ! And again when they 
reached chapel doors they heard the bishops and 
clerks within in unison continue the introit, 
^'O blessed, O holy Augustine, help thou this 
company." 

A month later Richard won a smart little victory 
near Gisors, where King Philip drank moat water, 
and nearly got knocked on the head. The king 
announced this in a letter, and asked for more 



84 HUGH, BISHOP OF LINCOLN 

prayers, and Adam, the biographer, felt that the 
heavenly triumph of his friend was complete. He 
would have been less elate if he had known that all 
the bishops got a similar letter, even wicked old 
Hugh de Pudsey. 

Lincoln by this time was the home of learned and 
reliable men. The canons, prebends, and placemen 
had been chosen with great care. Hugh had cast 
his net far and wide and enclosed some very edible 
fishes. We know of not a few. William of 
Leicester, Montanus, has already been mentioned. 
Giraldus Cambrensis (a most learned, amusing, and 
maUcious writer, on the lines of Anthony A. Wood, 
or even of Horace Walpole) was another. Walter de 
Map a third.^ It was part of Hugh's high sense of 
duty which made him fight with all his weight for 
a worthy though a broad-minded use of patronage. 
He often upbraided the archbishop with his careless 
use of this power, who was immersed in worldly 
business and too given to bestow benefices for 
political or useful services. He said himself that the 
most grievous worldly misfortune he ever suffered 
was to find men whom he trusted and advanced turn 
out to be immoral sluggards. Yet another of his 
promotions was that of William de Blois, who after- 
wards succeeded him. In fact, like every great 
bishop of the time, he gathered his eniditij his 
scholars, around him, and these were not looked 
upon as mere dreamers and im^practicable book- 

' Whom some wish to acquit of writing that jovial drinking 
song, 

" I intend to end my days, 
In a tavern drinking." 



IN TROUBLES— 85 

worms. Lore and action went hand in hand. The 
men of affairs and the men of learning, in this age, 
were interchangeable persons. Consequently when 
Richard's attention was directed to Lincoln and its 
bishop, when he noticed that it was a centre for 
sound and steady clerks whose wallets were by no 
means unstuffed, and when he reflected that he had 
failed to lay hands upon the bishop's money, he 
resolved to have something at any rate from this fine 
magazine. He wrote to the archbishop to order, by 
letter, twelve eminent clerks, who had prudence, 
counsel, and eloquence, to serve at their ow^i expense 
in the Roman Court, in Germany, Spain, and else- 
where. The post from Canterbury duly arrived 
with twelve sealed ^^ pair of letters," to be directed 
to eminent men, and with a special letter to order 
the bishop to hasten and obey. The bearer found 
the bishop at his Buckden House, and dinner was 
just on the board. There was much buzz and hum 
among those present when the tale was told, but 
Hugh made no reply. He simply sat down to table. 
The clergy, a pavid flock, chattered their fears 
between the mouthfuls. They hoped rather hope- 
lessly, that the answer would be all sugary and 
smiling ; at any rate that their master would try 
a little ogling of the archbishop, who could, if he 
would, make things ever so much better. While 
they were exchanging their views upon expediency 
and the great propriety of saving one's skin, the 
stout-hearted bishop rose from table. He had 
consulted none of these scared advisers, so that he 
might not throw the responsibility upon their 
shivering backs. He turned to the messenger and 



86 HUGH, BISHOP OF LINCOLN 

said, '^ These are novelties, and hitherto unheard of, 
both the things which my lord has ordered on the 
king's authority and on his own. Still he may know 
that I never was, nor will be, a letter carrier of his 
epistles ; and I never have, nor will now, oblige our 
clergy to undertake royal service. I have often 
stopped even clerks of other parts, beneficed in our 
bishopric, from daring to make themselves beholden 
to secular patronage in public offices, such as forest 
diversion, and other like administrations. Some, who 
were less obedient on this point, we have even 
chastened by long sequestration of their livings. On 
what reasonable count, then, ought we to pluck men 
from the very vitals of our Church, and send them by 
order on the royal service ? Let it be enough for 
our lord the king that (certainly a danger to their soul's 
salvation) the archbishops, neglecting the duty of 
their calling, are already utterly given over to the 
performance of his business. If that is not enough 
for him, then this bishop will come with his people. 
He will come, I say, and hear his orders from the 
king's own lips. He will come ready to carry out 
what is right next after those same orders. 

'^ But as for you, take the bundle of twelve letters 
which you say you have brought to us, and be off 
with them and make just what use you please 
of them. But every single word which I speak to 
you, be sure to repeat to our lord the archbishop : 
and do not fail to end with the message that if the 
arrangement holds that our clergy are to go to the 
king, I myself likewise will go with them. I have 
not gone before without them ; and they will not go 
without me now. This is the right relation between 



IN TROUBLES— 87 

a good shepherd and good sheep : he must not 
scatter them by fooHshly letting them out of his ken. 
They must not get into trouble by rash escape from 
him/^ 

The letter carrier, a court cleric, was finely indig- 
nant. He was a man careful-chosen, haughty by 
nature, but still more haughty as ro3^al envoy. He 
w^as bridling up for a volley of threats when the 
bishop cut him short, and ordered him off at the 
double. He slunk away abashed. A deputation, of 
weight, from Lincoln next waited upon the arch- 
bishop to expostulate with him for playing chuck 
taw with the immunity of the church, and franking 
with his authority such messages. He smiled 
graciously, after the manner of his kind, and hid his 
spleen. He meant no harm, of course : if harm there 
were, he was glad to be disobeyed, and he w^ould 
make all quiet and right. Of course in reality he 
took care to twist the Lion^s tail with both hands, and 
the next thing was a public edict, that all the goods of 
the bishop were to be taken care of by the king^s 
collectors. The good man heard and remarked, 
^' Did I not tell you truly of these men : their voice is 
Jacob's voice, but the hands are the hands of Esau ? '^ 
It was easier to order than to execute. The 
anathema counted for much, but the public con- 
science no doubt for more. The officers balked and 
remonstrated. Richard insisted, but his tools bent 
in his hand. '^ Those English are scared at shadows,'^ 
he said ; ^^ let us send Mercadier. He will know how 
to play with the Burgundian fellow. '^ This amiable 
man w^is the captain of the Routiers, w^hose playful 
habits may be guessed fi'om the fact that he is the 



88 HUGH, BISHOP OF LINCOLN 

gentleman who afterwards skinned Bertrand de 
Gourdon for shooting the king. One of the king's 
friends answered, ^^ Mercadier is necessary, my lord 
the king, to your w^ar. We should lose our pains 
and also his services if the Lincoln bishop's anathema 
should take effect." The king agreed that the risk 
was too heavy, so he ordered Stephen de Turnham to 
take charge of the bishop's goods, as he loved his life 
and limbs. This man had been seneschal of Anjou 
under the Idng's father, and was well affected to the 
bishop ; but he w^as between the devil and the deep 
sea. With some heaviness and nervousness Stephen 
moved upon Sleaford. Between Peterborough and 
Market Deeping, whom should he fall in with but the 
bishop and his party ! The uneasy disseizers fetched 
a compass, halted, and got hold of some of the clergy. 
They were as humble as Ahaziah's third captain 
before Elijah. They were obUged to do it, but, poor 
lambs, they w^ould not hurt so much as a swan's 
feather. And would the bishop, by all that was 
mvokeable, kindly defer his anathema ? or else the 
king would be royally angry, and they would get 
more than they deserved. The bishop answered the 
clergy, ^^ It is not their parts to keep our things 
whole. Let them go. Let them linger and break in 
upon the goods, as they think fit. They are not ours 
but our Lady's, the holy Mother of God." He then 
brought out the end of his linen stole from his cloak 
(which stole he always wore, ready for confirmation 
and excommunication) shook it and added, ^' This 
little bit of stuff will bring back to the last halfpenny 
whatever they reeve away." He then passed on to 
Buckden (near Huntingdon), where he issued orders 



IN TROUBLES— 89 

to all the archdeacons and rural deans, that so soon 
as the officers should arrive they should clang bells, 
light candles and solemnly ban all who should 
violently and unrighteous^ touch the property of 
their Church. The flutter in the clerical dovecot was 
immense, but the bishop simply said good-night to 
his excited chaplains and was soon in the sweetest 
slumber. Except that he said Amen in his sleep a 
few^ more times than usual, and more earnestly, they 
saw no trace of neural tremours about his sedate 
carriage. He seems to have been well aware of the 
gravity of the struggle, for he had already announced 
at Lincoln that he would have to go abroad. He 
had gathered his children at the Mass, where he added 
the priestly blessing from the law of Moses, ^ 
had commended himself to their prayers, given 
them the kiss of peace and commended them to God, 
and was already on the way to the archbishop. He 
stayed a few days at Buckden. Thence he slowly 
made his way to London. On the road a rural dean 
consulted him upon the case of a girl with second 
sight and a terrific tongue. This damsel would 
prophetically discover things stolen or lost, and she 
had a large following. If any discreet and learned 
man tackled her she would talk him down, and put 
him to rout. She was brought to meet Hugh by the 
roadside, amid a crowd of confirmation candidates. 
He addressed her, chiding not so much the damsel 
as the demon within her, ^' Come now, unhappy girl, 
what can you divine for us ? Tell me please, if 3^ou 
can, what this hand holds in it V^ He held out his 
right hand closed over his stole end. She made no 
' "The Lord bless thee and keep thee," &c. Numbers, vi., 24. 



90 HUGH, BISHOP OF LINCOLN 

reply, but fell at his feet in a sort of faint. After a 
pause he bade them lift her up and asked through 
the dean (for he was ignorant of the country woman's 
talk) how she had learnt to divine ? '^ I cannot 
divine. I implore the mercy of this holy bishop," she 
replied, and knelt at his feet. He laid his hands upon 
her head, prayed, blessed her, and sent her to the 
Prior of Huntingdon, the penitentiary priest of the 
district, to hear her confession. She not only gave 
up witchcraft, but ceased to be brazen-faced and a 
shrew : so that people bruited this matter as a miracle, 
and a handsome one it was. The bishop probably 
saved her from the vengeance of this rural dean, for 
witch-burning was not unknown even then, as Walter 
de Map witnesses. This was not the first essay of 
our bishop in witch-laying. When he was still Prior 
of Witham, Bartholomew, Bishop of Exeter, a learned 
and pious man, and one of St. Thomas' opposers, 
consulted him upon a sad case. Bishop Bartholomew 
was interested in spiritualism (which shews the same 
face in every century, and never adds much to its 
phenomena), as Matthew Paris recounts. A poor girl 
was the prey of a most violent and cruel Incubus, 
whom no fasts or austerities could divorce from her. 
Hugh suggested united prayer on her behalf, which 
was made, but not answered. A rival Incubus, how- 
ever, came upon the scenes, of a softer mood, and 
wooed with mild speeches. He promised to deliver 
her, and pointed out the perforated St. John's wort 
as a herb odious to devils. This the artful woman 
put in her bosom and her house, and kept both 
suitors at bay. ^ The bishop was much struck with 

^ If the reader disbelieves this story, let him read Bede 
upon Luke viii., 30, says the narrator. 



IN TROUBLES — 9I 

this story, as well he might be, and used often to tell 
it. A monk told him another similar tale from 
Essex ; but enough of such fables. 

When he left Huntingdon the bishop went on to 
St. Albans, seemingly in a leisurely way, and as he 
drew near to this place, he met a crowd of provost^s 
men dragging a condemned thief to the gallows. 
The poor creature^s arms were braced behind his 
back. The word went round quickly that it was 
Hugh of Lincoln, and there was the usual rush to beg 
for his blessing, police craft and piety being wedded 
in those officers. The captive by some acrobatics 
managed to rush too, and came against the horse's 
neck, was knocked down, and in the dust cried for 
mercy. The bishop drew rein and asked who the 
man was and what he wanted. His attendants, who 
knew the language, answered him, ^^ It is not your 
part, my lord, to ask more about the fellow. Indeed, 
you must let him just pass.'^ They feared lest the 
bishop, already in deep water, should fall into still 
deeper by some chivalrous audacity. But he would 
know the tale and w^hy the man cried him mercy : 
and when he knew it, he cried, ^^ Lackaday ! God be 
blessed ! ^' and turning to the hangmen, he said, 
^^ Come back, my sons, with us to St. Albans. Hand 
the man over to us, and tell your masters and the 
judges that we have taken him from you. We will 
see that you take no harm.^' They did not dare to 
resist, but gave up their victim. He was quickly 
untied and given to the almoner. When they 
reached the abbey the clergy and attendant came to 
the bishop and begged him most earnestly to allow 
the civil magistrates to do their oftice. '^ Up till nowi 



92 HUGH, BISHOP OF LINCOLN 

my lord, neither the king nor any other man who 
lay in wait for you, could bring a just or a just- 
seeming charge against you. But if when the legal 
judges have passed sentence and handed the case to 
the executive, you quash that sentence by your 
pontifical authority, your ill-wishers will call it a 
blow against the king's crown, and you will fall into 
the condemnation of flat treason/^ ^^ I am assured of 
your kindness,^^ he answered ; ^' but let these judges 
come in to us and you shall hear what we have to say 
to each other/^ The judges were already tapping at 
the doors, for a word with the audacious bishop. 
^^ Gentlemen, you are wise enough to know that your 
holy Mother the Church has everywhere this pre- 
rogative : all who are falling into any danger of 
condemnation and fly to her, may get freedom, and 
be kept unhurt." This they well knew and believed 
to be quite right. ^' If you know this, you ought to 
know that where the bishop is, united to the faithful 
in Christ, there too is the church. He who is used by 
his ministry to dedicate the material stones of the 
church to the Lord ; who also has the work of 
sanctifying the living stones, the real stuff of the 
church, by each of the Sacraments, to rear from 
them the Lord's temple, he by right must enjoy the 
privileges of ecclesiastical dignity, wherever he be, 
and succour all who are in danger, according to his 
legal order.'' 

The judges gratefully agreed, remembered that 

this was so expressed in ancient English law, but now 

obsolete, thanks to bishops' sloth or princes' tyranny. 

They summed up by this politeness, ^^ My lord, we 

^ are your sons and parishioners. You are our father 



IN TROUBLES — 93 

and pastor. So it will not be ours to run counter to 
your privilege or to dispute it : nor yours, by your 
leave, to bring us into any hazard. If you decide 
upon the man's release, we offer no opposition ; but 
by your leave we trust you to see that we incur no 
danger from the king.'' ^' Well and rightly spoken/' 
said he, '^ and on these terms I take him from your 
hands. For this infraction, I will make answer 
where I must." So the man escaped the gallow^s, and 
was set free again when they reached London. 

Two remarks are worth making here. First, that 
the right of sanctuary, both for accused and of guilty 
persons, were guaranteed by the old Lav^s Ecclesi- 
astical of King Edward the Confessor, as collected by 
William the First in the fourth year of his reign, 
which laws were romantically dear to the English 
people. The stretch came in where the Church was 
interpreted to mean the bishop and faithful. 
Secondly, Saint Nicholas similarly rescued two men 
from the scaffold, but not at a moment so inopportune 
for himself. If the rescue had law behind it, and it 
might be so defended, it was a very aw^kward moment 
to choose to champion a hangdog. But this was the 
age of chivalry, and without such innate chivalry 
Hugh would never have cast the spell he did over 
King Richard's England. 



CHAPTER VII 



-AND DISPUTES 



WHEX Hugh, under this new cloud, did at 
last reach London the archbishop had no 
counsel to give, except that he should shear his 
clergy rather tight and send their golden fleeces to 
appease the king. *' Do not you know that the 
king thirsts for money as a dropsical man does for 
water, my lord bishop ?" To this the answer was, 
*' Yes. He is a dropsical man, but I will not be 
water for him to swallow.' It was plain that the 
archbishop was no friend in need, and back they 
went towards Lincoln. At Cheshunt he found a 
poor, mad sailor triced up in a doorway by hands 
and feet. Hugh ran to him, made the holy sign, and 
then with outstretched right hand began the Gospel, 
low and quick, "In the beginning was the Word.'' 
The rabid patient cowered, like a frightened hound ; 
but when the words " full of grace and truth " were 
reached, he put out his tongue derisively. Hugh, not 
to be beaten, consecrated holy water, sprinkled him, 
and bade folk put some in his mouth. Then he 
went on his way ; and the mad man, no longer mad, 

94 



— AND DISPUTES 95 

sanely went on pilgrimage, men said, and made a fine 
end at the last. His own bishop, who had met him, 
had clapped spm'S to his horse and bolted. It may be 
suspected that this bolting bishop was the newly 
elect of London, who was William de Santa Maria, 
an ex - Canon of Lincoln, Richard^s secretary, 
Giraldus^ opponent, better known than loved in his 
late Chapter. 

Matters being settled at Lincoln, he set out again 
for London and paused to ask the Barons of the 
Exchequer most kindly to see to the indemnities of 
his church while he was away. They rose to greet 
him and readily gave their promises. They prayed 
him to take a seat among them even for a moment. 
So pleased were they to have the archfoe of clerical 
secularism in this trap, that they called it a triumph 
indeed, to see the day when he sat on the Treasury 
bench. He jumped up, a little ashamed, kissed 
them all, and said, ^'Now I, too, can triumph over 
you if after taking the kiss you allow in anything 
less than friendly to my church.'^ They laughingly 
said, ^^ How wonderfully wise this man is ! Why, 
he has easily laid it upon us, that whatever the 
king orders, we cannot without great disgrace 
trouble him at ail.^^ He blessed them all and was 
soon in Normandy. But Richard w^as following 
hot-foot the two half-brother Ademars, lords of 
Limoges and Angouleme, who had been playing 
into the hands of the French enemy. There was 
nothing to do but wait patiently, which he did at 
St. Nicholas^ Monastery, Angers, from February to 
the beginning of March, 1199. Pope Innocent III.'s 
legates were also there, and they passed three weeks 



96 HUGPI, BISHOP OF LINCOLN 

together. He conferred ordinations near here in the 
Abbey of Grandmont ; refusing to ordain one of 
Walter Map's young friends, who afterwards became 
a leper. The king, it was reported, was full of huge 
threats and savage designs against his despisers, and 
if the clergy trembled before, they now shook like 
aspen leaves. The story of Hugh's predicament had 
got wind. The Hereford Canons wanted to choose 
the witty Walter Map to be bishop. He was 
already Archdeacon of Oxford, Canon of Lincoln, 
and Prebend of Hereford, but alas ! he was also a 
friend of the disfavoured bishop. This fact is 
worth some emphasis, as it illustrates the large- 
mindedness of the saint. Walter was not only a 
vigorous pluralist, much stained by non-residence, 
but he was a whipster, whose lash was constantly 
flicking the monks, then in their decline. If 
any one considers his description of the Cistercians ; 
of the desert life wherein they love their neigh- 
bour by expelling him ; of their oppression whereby 
they glory not in Christ^s Cross but in crucifying 
others ; of their narrowness who call themselves 
Hebrews and all others Egyptians ; of their sheep^s 
clothing and inward ravening ; of their reversals 
of Gospel maxims and their novelties ; he will see 
that the lash for Cistercians must have fallen 
a good deal also upon Carthusian shoulders. Then 
Master Walter was towards being a favourer of 
Abelard and of his disciple Arnald of Brescia, 
w^hose ascetic mind was shocked at the fatal opulence 
of cardinals. Altogether Walter was a man who 
feared God, no doubt, but hardly showed it in the 
large jests which he made, which to our ears often 



—AND DISPUTES 97 

sound rather too large. But Hugh recognised 
in the satirist a power for righteousness, and 
certainly loved and favoured him. Consequently 
the Hereford Canons with those of Angers and 
of the Lincoln Chapter laid their heads together 
to compose the strife between king and bishop : 
and the readiest way was of course for the 
latter to compound with a round sum and get off 
home. 

The wars made the whole country dangerous for 
travelhng, and it was neither safe to stay at home nor 
to move afield. But Job was not more persistent 
against his three friends than Hugh against the three 
unanimous Chapters, and his main argument was that 
the peace of the church must never be bought with 
money or this would endow its disturbers. His 
wisdom was well evidenced by events in the next 
reign. With this advice he urged them to sleep over 
the matter and discuss it next day. But the struggle 
to avoid compromising principles in order not only to 
serve the hour, but to save the love and, perhaps, the 
lives of friends was a very severe strain to him. When 
they had gone out he was dismally cast down and 
acknowledged that he had rarely compressed so much 
grief into so Httle space. Then he sat in silence, 
thought, and prayer that the tangle might be so un- 
knotted, that God not be offended nor his own friends 
and sons slighted and alienated. Upon this he slept 
and dreamed sweet dreams of lovely sights and heard 
the roll of the Psalm of Divine Battle chaunted by 
heavenly voices, ^^O God, wonderful art Thou in Thy 
holy places, even the God of Israel ; He will give 
strength and power unto His people ; blessed be 

8 



98 HUGH, BISHOP OF LINCOLN 

God."^ He woke up refreshed, and at his weekly 
Saturday Confession deeply blamed himself for some 
hesitation he had felt, when baleful advice was given 
him. 

A little after this the Abbess of Fontevrault came 
to see him. The King^s mother Eleanor, her guest, 
had been sent for in a hurry. The king had been 
hurt. A serf of Achard of Chains had ploughed up a 
golden relic, an emperor with his family seated 
round a golden table. Ademar of Limoges had seized 
it. Richard demanded the whole and was after it 
sword in hand. The holders were in Castle Chains, 
short of weapons but not of valour, and held out 
gallantly armed with frying-pans and whatnot. The 
place was undermined. Richard, without his hau- 
berk, was directing the crash, w^hen a man pulled 
an arrow from the mortar ; aimed it and hit him on 
the neck and side. He went to his tent, and plucked 
at it, broke it off ; was operated upon ; would 
not keep quiet. The w^ound turned angry and then 
black, and the Lion lay dying. He made his will, a 
generous and charitable one, confessed his sins, was 
houselled and anhealed, and died on Passion Tues- 
day, April 6th. His brain and bowels were buried 
at Charroux, his heart at Rouen, and his body at his 
father's feet, in penitence, in the nunnery of Font- 
evrault. Hugh w^as on his way to the Cathedral at 
Angers to take duty the next day. Palm Sunday, 
when Gilbert de Lacy, a clerk, rode up to him and 
told him of the king's death and of the funeral next 

' Ixviii. 35. A psalm full of associations of battles long ago : 
sung against Julian the Apostate, used by Charlemagne, 
Anthony, Dunstan, and many more. 



— AND DISPUTES 99 

day in Fontevrault. Hugh groaned deeply and an- 
nounced at Angers that he should set out at once for 
that place. Every one begged and prayed that he 
would do no such thing. The mere rumour of the 
king's death had as usual let loose all the forces of dis- 
order. Robbery, violence, and general anarchy were 
up. His own servants had been held up and robbed 
of forty silver marks, and the interregnum was more 
dreadful than any tyranny. What is the use of 
such charitable designs if you merely get left in 
the wilds by robbers, bare of carriage and clothes ? 
they asked. His answer was worthy of a man 
who lived in holy fear and no other. '^ We are all 
well aware what things can happen — fearful to the 
fearful — on this journey. But I think it a thing 
much more fearful that I should be coward enough 
to fail my late lord and king, by being away at such 
a crisis, by witholding my faith and grace from 
him in death, which I always showed him warmly 
in his life. What of the trouble he gave us, by 
giving in too much to the evil advice of those 
who flattered him ? Certainly when I was with 
him, he never treated me but most honourably, 
never dismissed me unheard, when I made him 
some remarks face to face upon my business. If 
he wronged me when I was away, I have put it 
down to the spite of my detractors, not to his wicked- 
ness or malice. I will, therefore, pay him back to 
my power the honours he so often bestowed upon 
me. It will not be my fault if I do not help warmly 
at his obsequies. Say robbers do meet me on the 
road, say they do take the horses and carry off the 
robes, my feet will travel all the fleeter, because they 
ILg'C. 



100 HUGH, BISHOP OF LINCOLN 

are lightened from the vestment baggage. If they 
reall}' tie my feet and rob me of the power of 
moving, then and then only will be a real excuse for 
being absent in the body, for it will be caused not by 
vice but by outside obstacles/' He left his friends 
in the city and almost all his stuff, took one minor 
clerk, one monk, and a tiny train and set out. On 
the way he heard that the poor Queen Berengaria 
was at Castle Beaufort, so he left the doubtful high- 
way for a dangerous forest track to visit her. He 
soothed her almost crazy grief, bid her bear grief 
bravely and face better days cautiously, said Mass 
for her, blessed her and her train, and went back at 
once. He got to Saumur the same day, where he 
was greeted with a sort of ovation by the townsfolk 
and was entertained by Gilbert de Lacy, who was 
studying there. Next day, Palm Sunday, he sped on 
to Fontevrault and met the bearers just at the doors. 
He paid all the royal honours he could to his late 
Master and was entertained at the Monastery. For 
three days he ceased not to say Mass and the Psalms 
for the kings lying there, as for all the faithful 
who lay quiet in Christ, prayed for their pardon and 
the bliss of everlasting light. A beautiful picture 
this of the brave old bishop in the Xorman Abbey 
Church, where two kings, his friend and his forgiven 
foe, lay '' shrouded among the shrouded women " in 
that Holy Week of long ago I 

This compassion was not only a matter of honour, 
but of faith. It was one of the principles of his life and 
conduct that hereby w^as set forth the love of God, and 
applied to the needs of man. He used often to say 
that countless other things manifested the boundless 



— AND DISPUTES lOI 

love of God to men, but of those we know, these sur- 
pass the greatness of all the rest, which He ceases 
not to bestow before man's rise and after his setting. 
^' To touch lightly a few of these in the case of men 
who rise and set : God the Son of God gave for each 
man before he was born the ransom of His own death. 
God the Father sent His own same Son into the world 
to die for the man : God the Holy Ghost poured 
Himself out an earnest for him. So together the 
whole Trinity, one God, together set up the Sacra- 
ments by which he is born, cleansed, defended, and 
strengthened, gave the props of His own law to 
rule and teach him, and generously made provision 
for his good by other mysterious means. When 
man^s fitful life is past and its course cut off by 
death, when his once dearest look on him now with 
aversion, when parents and children cast him forth 
with anxious haste from the halls once his, God's 
most gracious kindness scorns not what all others 
despise. Then straightway He ordains not only 
angelic spirits to the ward of the soul at its return to 
its Maker, but He sends for the burial service those 
who are first and foremost of His earthly servants, to 
wit the priests and others in the sacred orders. 
And this is His command to them ; ^ Behold,' He 
says, ^ My priests and caretakers of My palaces in 
the world, behold My handiwork. I have always 
loved it. I spared not My only Son for it but 
made Him share in its mortality and its death. 
Behold, I say, that is now become a burden to its 
former lovers and friends. They crowd to cast it 
out and drive it forth. Away, then, speed and help 
My refugee : take up the Image of My Son, crucified 



I02 HUGH, BISHOP OF LINCOLN 

for it : take instruments for incense and wax. Ring 
out the signals of My Church for a solemn assembly ; 
raise high your hymnal voices, open the doors of My 
house and its inner shrines : place near to the altar, 
which holds the Body of My Son, what is left of 
that brother or sister ; finally, cover him a bier with 
costly palls, for at last he triumphs : crowd it with 
lamps and candles, circle round him, overthrown as 
he is, with helping crowds of servants. Do more. 
Repeat the votive offering of My Son. Make the 
richest feast, and thus the panting spirit, restless and 
weary with the jars of the wonted mortality it has 
just laid by, may breathe to strength : and the flesh, 
empty for the while of its old tenant, and now to 
be nursed in the lap of the Mother Earth, may be 
bedewed with a most gracious holiness, so that at the 
last day w^hen it is sweetly reunited to its well-know^n 
companion, it may gladly flower anew and put on with 
joy the everlasting freshness.^' This was no sudden 
seizure and passing emotion at the romance of funerals. 
He issued a general order in his diocese forbidding 
parish priests to bury the bodies of grown persons, 
if he were by to do it. If it were a case of good life, 
the more need to honour ; if of an evil life, such 
would all the more yearn for greater succour. So he 
went to all, and if they were poor he ordered his 
almoner to find the lights and other requirements. 
Any funeral would bring him straight from his horse 
to pray at the bier. If he had no proper book 
wherein he might read without halting (and his eyes 
waxed dim at the last) he would stand near the 
officiant, chaunt the psalms with him, say the amens, 
and be clerk, almost a laic. If he had the right 



— AND DISPUTES IO3 

book, he would be priest, say the prayers, use the 
holy water, swing the censer, cast on the mould, 
then give shrift and benison and go on his way. If 
the place were a large city and many bodies came 
for burial he did just the same until all were finished. 
Potentates expecting to eat bread with him were 
often vexed and complained at these delays ; but, host 
or guest, he had more appetite for holy than for social 
functions. King Richard at Rouen, like his father 
before him., with all the Court and the Royal Family, 
when they invited Hugh to table, had to keep fasting 
while Hugh performed these higher duties without 
clipping or diminishing the office. When the king's 
servants chafed, and would have spurred him on, he 
would say, ^^ No need to wait for us. Let him eat in 
the Lord's name ;" and to his friends, ^^ It is better 
for the king to eat without us, than for our humility 
to pass the Eternal King's order unfulfilled.'^ Near 
Argentan, in Normandy, he once found a new grave 
by the roadside and learnt that a beggar-boy lay there. 
The priest had let him lie there, because there was 
no fee and no one would carry him to the church- 
yard. Hugh was deeply grieved, said the office him- 
self, and rattled that priest pretty smartly to his bishop 
for denying Christian burial to the penniless and 
needy. 

Once while the cathedral works were being carried 
on, a mason engaged on the fabric asked him for 
pontifical shrift for a brother who had just died. It 
was winter, and the feast of St. Stephen. Hugh 
promptly gave the absolution, and then asked if the 
body were yet buried. When he learnt that it was 
only being watched in a somewhat distant church, 



104 HUGH, BISHOP OF LINCOLN 

he ordered three horses instantly, one for himself, 
one for his outrider, and one for his chaplain ; but as 
only two were to be had he sent the chaplain on 
ahead, himself followed with a monk and a couple 
of servers, and devoutly buried not only the mason's 
brother, but five other bodies. Another time, when 
the Archdeacon of Bedford gave a large and solemn 
feast to the dignified clergy — who, by the way, seldom 
shine in these narratives — the bishop so wearied them 
by his funereal delays that they explained their im- 
patience to him not without some tartness of reproof. 
His only reply was, ^' Why do you not recall the voice 
of the Lord, who said with His holy lips, My meat 
is to do the will of Aly Father in heaven ? ^^ Another 
time, again, one hot spring w^hen there w^as a general 
meeting of magnates, he heard that one of the 
prelates w^as dead.^ The man was an outrageous 
guzzler and toper, but Hugh prayed earnestly for 
him, and then asked w^here he was to be buried. 
The now unromantic spot of Bermondsey was to be 
the burying ground, and the funeral was on the very 
day and hour of the Westminster gathering, in which 
matters deeply interesting to Lincoln were to be 
handled. No one of the bishops or abbots would stir 
out for their detected dead fellow, but '' to desert him 
in his last need ^^ was impossible to his saintlier brother. 
He must be off to bury the man, council or no 
council. The body had been clad in an alb and 
chasuble. Its face was bare and black, and the gross 
frame w^as bursting from its clothes. Every one else 
had a gum, an essence or incense ; but Hugh, who was 

' Simon of Pershore, if in 1198 : and Robert of Caen, if in 1196, 
but less likel3\ 



—AND DISPUTES lOS 

peculiarly sensitive to malodours, showed nothing 
but tenderness for the corrupt mortality, and seemed 
to cherish it as a mother a babe. The ^^ sweet 
smelling sacrifice ^^ shielded him in his work of 
mercy, they said. 

William of Newburgh, a writer much given to 
ghost stories, tells a Buckingham tale of a certain dead 
man who would walk. He fell violently upon his wife 
first, and then upon his brothers, and the neighbours 
had to watch to fend him off. At last he took to 
walking even in the day, ^^ terrible to all, but visible 
only to a few.'' The clergy were called ; the arch- 
deacon took the chair. It was a clear case of 
Vampire. The man must be dug up, cut to bits, and 
burnt. But the bishop was very particular about the 
dead, and when they asked his leave he was indig- 
nant at the proposal. He wrote instead a letter 
with his own hand, which absolved the unquiet 
spirit. This was laid upon the dead man's breast, 
and thenceforward he rested in peace, as did his 
alarmed neighbours. Whatever we think of the 
tale, the tender reverent spirit of the bishop is still 
a wonder. Although greatly given to an enthusiasm 
for the saints, a puzzling enthusiasm for their teeth, 
nails, plaisters, and bandages, Hugh was looked upon 
as an enemy to superstition, and was an eager sup- 
pressor of the worship of wells and springs, which 
still show how hard the Pagan religion dies. He 
found and demolished this '* culture" at Wycombe 
and Bercamstead.^ 

The great theological question of Hugh's time was 

' The Wycombe Well is probably the Round Basin, near the 
Roman Villa, but the other I am unable to hear news of. 



I06 HUGH, BISHOP OF LINCOLN 

certainly the Eucharistic one. Eucharistic doctrine 
grew, as the power of the Church grew ; as the one 
took a bolder tone so did the other. The word 
Transubstantiation (an ambiguous term to the dis- 
putants who do not define substance) had been 
invented by Peter of Blois, but not yet enjoined 
upon the Church by the Lateran Council of 1215. 
The language of the earlier fathers, of St. Bernard, 
did not suffice. Peter Lombard's tentative terms had 
given way to less reserved speech. Thomas Aquinas, 
not yet born, was to unite the rival factions which 
forked now into Berengarius, who objected to the 
very terms Body of Christ, &c., always used for the 
Sacrament ; and now into some crude cannibal 
theories, which found support in ugly miracles of 
clotted chalices and bleeding fingers in patens. 
Abelard had tried to hush the controversy by a little 
judicious scepticism, but the air was full of debate. 
If learned men ignored the disputes the unlearned 
would not. Fanatical monks on the one side and 
fanatical Albigenses on the other, decried or over- 
cried the greatest mysteries of the faith, and brawled 
over the hidden manna. Hugh's old Witham monk 
Ainard had once preached a crusade against the blas- 
phemers of the Sacraments, and is mentioned with 
honour for this very thing by Hugh's intimate and 
biographer. The saint's conspicuous devotion at 
the Mass, the care with which he celebrated and 
received, of themselves would point to a peculiarly 
strong belief in the Invisible Presence. Christians 
are, and have always been, lineally bound to believe 
in the supreme necessity of the Lord's Marriage 
Supper to the soul's health and obedience. They 



— AND DISPUTES 107 

are bound to use the old language, ^'This is My 
Body.'^ In earlier days, when Church thinkers were 
all Platonists, or at least Realists, the verity of the 
Sacrament was the Idea behind it. The concrete veils 
of that Idea were hallowed only by their use, associa- 
tion, and impact. But when after the crusades Aris- 
totle was no longer the Bishop of Arians, but now the 
supreme philosopher, the language hitherto natural 
to piety had either to be changed or infused by 
violence with new senses, or both. The latter half 
of the twelfth century saw this unhappy deadlock 
between history and reason, and made strenuous 
efforts to compose the strife. So far as we may judge, 
upon a difficult question, where little must be written 
and much would be required to express an exact 
opinion, Hugh seems to have held that by mystic 
sanctification the host is turned into Christ^s Body ; 
that this conversion is not a sudden but a gradual 
one, until the Son offers Himself anew, and hence the 
Sacrifice may be said to be repeated. The story 
which illustrates this position best is that of the 
young clerk who came to him at Buckden. The 
bishop had just been dedicating a large and beautiful 
chalice and upbraiding the heavily- endowed digni- 
taries for doing nothing at all for the poorly served 
churches from which they drew their stipends. Then 
he said Mass, and the clerk saw Christ in his hands, 
first as a little child at the Oblation, when '^ the custom 
is to raise the host aloft and bless it^^ ; and again w^ien 
it is ^^ raised to be broken and consumed in three 
pieces,^^ ^' as the Son of the Highest offering Himself 
to the Father for man^s salvation.'^ The clerk tells 
him of the double vision — the voucher of a message 



I08 HUGH, BISHOP OF LINCOLN 

sent by his late crusading father, who warned him to 
tell the archbishop, through the Bishop of Lincoln, 
that the evil state of the church must be amended. 
The message and the messenger seem to answer 
exactly to the monk of Evesham^ whose Dantesque 
revelations * are here almost quoted. The wrath of 
God was incurred by the unchaste Uving priests, who 
so behaved that the Sacraments were polluted, and 
by the manner in which archdeacons and others 
trafficked in bribes. Hugh heard the story at the 
altar, wept, dried the eyes of both, Idssed the 
young man and brought him into the meal after- 
wards, and urged him to become a monk. This he 
did, and became the Monk of Evesham aforesaid. 
There is no necessary advance in Eucharistic 
doctrine in this story, for a similar visi(m was given 
to King Ekiward the Confessor, and Hugh was so 
reticent about such things that his chaplain Adam 
never dared to ask him, althou^ he dreamed that he 
asked him and was snubbed for his pains. *" Althou^ 
then, when you say, and more often, the LcHjd 
deigned to reveal this and other things to me, what 
do you want in the matter ? ^' In his last journey to 
Jouay,2 an old, feeble and withered priest, who would 
not dine with him as the parish priest was wont, 
came to ask him to see a wonder and to beg for his 
prayers. His story was that he, being in mortal sin, 
blind and weak in faith and practices, was saying 
Mass, and doubting whether so dirty a sinner could 
really handle so white and stainless a ^ory. When 
the fraction took place, blood dripped from the host 
and it grew into flesh. He dropped the new thing 
> Published by Aiber. See cfaap. zzzvi. * }oL 



—AND DISPUTES IO9 

into the chalice, covered it up, dismissed the people, 
and got papal absolution, and now would fain show 
the wonder. The lesser men were agape for the 
sight, but Hugh answered, ^^ In the Lord's name 
let them keep the signs of their infidelity to them- 
selves. What are they to us ? Are we to be 
astonished at the partial shows of the Divine gift, 
who daily behold this heavenly sacrifice whole and 
entire with most faithful gaze of mind ? Let him, 
who beholds not with the inner sight of faith the 
whole, go and behold the man's little scraps with his 
carnal vision.'' He then blessed the priest and dis- 
missed him, and rebuked his followers for curiosity, 
and gave them a clear Eucharistic lesson not repeated 
for us, upon what faith lays down in the matter. 
From his speech then and elsewhere the good Adam 
gathered that Hugh often saw what others only be- 
Ueved to be there, the ^^ bared face of the inner Man." 
These stories seem to dissociate Hugh from the 
grosser forms of Eucharistic teaching, and open the 
way for an explanation of his behaviour at Fechamp, 
which is otherwise almost inexplicable. We may 
take it that he held a belief in a living Presence, 
which teeth could not bruise nor change decay. The 
language he uses is not consistent with later Enghsh 
teaching which shrinks from talking about a repeated 
sacrifice. It is also inconsistent with later Roman 
devotion, because he seems to dislike the notion of a 
conditioned or corporal Presence, and anyhow to 
shrink from the definite statements to which the 
Roman Church has since committed herself. He 
certainly did not fix the Coming of the Bridegroom 
at the Consecration Prayer, a foiiion to any one 
particular word of it. 



no HUGH, BISHOP OF LINCOLN 

Far less conjectural is the splendid stand which he 
made for chastity of life, at a time when the standard 
in such matters was lax both in the world and also in 
the church. It came as a surprise to his contempo- 
raries that he should disapprove of the romantic ties 
between King Henry and fair Rosamond. That lady 
was buried at Godstowe by her royal lover, who 
draped her tomb, near the high altar, with silk, lamps, 
and lighted candles, making her the new founder, and 
for her sake raising the house from poverty and 
meanness to wealth and nobleness of building. 
While Hugh was earnestly praying at the altar (in 
1 191) he espied this splendid sepulchre. He asked 
whose it was, and when he learned said sternly, 
*^ Take her hence, for she was a whore. The love 
between the king and her was unlawful and adulterous. 
Bury her with the other dead outside the church, lest 
the Christian religion grow contemptible. Thus 
other women by her example may be warned and 
keep themselves from lawless and adulterous beds.^^ 
So far from being harsh, this decision to allow of no 
royal exceptions to the ten commandments was 
probably the kindest, strongest, and most wide- 
reaching protest that could be made against an 
unhappy and probably growing evil. This is of 
a piece with many other passages in his life, but 
hardly worth dwelling upon because the lawless 
loves, which in that day were too lightly regarded, in 
this day have usurped the sole title of immorality to 
themselves, as if there were not six other deadly sins 
besides. The best justification of the sentence is 
just this surprise with which it was received. 



CHAPTER VIII 



HUGH THE BUILDER 



THE strong personality of the man, his boldness 
and sagacity combined, come out in his 
building as clearly as in his conduct ; but since the 
learned are very litigious upon the questions of his 
architecture, the reader must have indulgence in 
his heart and a salt cellar in his hand, when he 
approaches this subject. 

First of all we must remember that in his age 
it was part of the education of a gentleman to know 
something about building. Hugh's grandfather must 
have built the old keep of Avalon Castle, which still 
stands above the modern chateau, and a family 
whose arms are, on a field or the eagle of the 
empire sable, were builders, both of necessity and 
of choice. When every baron, or at least every 
baron's father, had built himself a castle, planned 
and executed under his own eye ; when King 
Richard in person could plan and superintend the 
building of his great Castle Saucy, the Chateau 
Gaillard, it is not wonderful that Hugh also should 
be ready and willing to do much in stone and 
mortar. Then, again, he must have had some 



112 HUGH, BISHOP OF LINCOLN 

architectural training at the Grande Chartreuse. 
The first buildings of wood were overthrown in 
1 126 by an avalanche, and Guigo, the fifth prior, 
had refounded the whole buildings after that date. 
The upper church, since then a chapter house, was 
built in Romanesque style, with round arches, two 
rose windows, and three sanctuary windows with 
wide splays. In 1150 Humbert, Count of Savoy, 
founded a beautiful chapel and a guest house for 
visitors ; and even later than this there is a good 
deal of building going on at the lower house, farm 
buildings, guest house, and possibly even a church 
during the very time that Hugh was monk and 
procurator. Even if he took no personal part in any 
of these last works, he must have known and heard 
much of the art from men, who had done or were 
doing it. But it would not be rash to conclude that 
he had an apprenticeship in building before he set 
foot on English soil, and as well by education as by 
inheritance knew something of this work. 

Next we must bear in mind that every stone 
would, if possible, have a mystic signification. For 
some reason or other this notion makes the modern 
man impatient ; but this impatience does not alter the 
facts, but only obscures their explanation. Every- 
body knows that the three eastern lights mean, as 
they did to St. Barbara, the blessed Trinity ; but few 
people recognize that all numbers, whether in 
beams, pillars, sides, arches, or decoration had a 
well recognised symbolism, which had come down, 
hall-marked by St. Augustine and St. Bernard, to the 
building and worshipping generations of those and 
much later days. 



HUGH THE BUILDER II3 

What was done at Witham we cannot now fully 
tell, for everything has perished of the upper house. 
The monks' church would be of stone, and probably 
was very Hke the present Friary Church. The cells 
certainly would be of wood in the second stage, for 
they were of ^^ weeps,'' as we have seen, in the first. 
This part of the Charterhouse we have concluded 
stood in a field now called ^' Buildings," but now 
so-called without visible reason. 

Round the present Friary Church there were the 
houses of the original inhabitants, a little removed 
from their foreign intruders ; not quite a mile away, 
as at Hinton, where the two houses are thus divided, 
but yet something near three quarters of that 
distance. 

When the inhabitants were removed to Knap in 
North Curry and elsewhere, they took their old 
rafters with them or sold these. Their walls seem 
to have been of mud and wattle, or of some 
unsaleable stuff, and these, no doubt, served for a 
time for the lay brethren, after a little trimming and 
thatching. But their church had to be looked to 
before it could serve for the worship of the conversi. 
The old inhabitants (near two hundred, Mr. Buckle 
thinks, rather generously), were still there up to 
Hugh's time, and if their church was like their 
houses the wooden roof was much decayed and the 
walls none of the best. Hugh resolved upon a 
stone vault of the Burgundian type, followed at the 
Grande Chartreuse, and he therefore had to thicken 
the walls by an extra case. The building was next 
divided into three parts, with doors from the north 
and west, so that men might seek refuge in the Holy 

9 



114 HUGH, BISHOP OF LINCOLN 

Trinity from the dark of the world and its setting 
suns. The stone roof is supported upon small 
semi-octagonal vaulting shafts, ending in truncated 
corbels. This fondness for the number eight, which 
reappears markedly at Lincoln, has to do with 
St. Augustine's explanations that eight (the number 
next to seven, the number of creation and rest) 
signifies the consummation of all things and 
Doomsday. Four is the number of the outer world, 
with its seasons and quarters ; three of the soul of 
man, the reflection of God ; and eight, therefore, 
which comes after the union of these, is judgment 
and eternal life. Hugh was, no doubt, his own 
architect (if such a word is not an anachronism 
here), but he employed Somerset builders, who left 
the mark of English custom upon this otherwise 
peculiar and continental looking building. The 
leper window has been noticed above. The only 
other building at Witham which pretends to bear 
traces of Hugh's hand is the guest house, and 
this, as we have seen, may be at bottom the very 
house where Hugh hob-a-nobbed with King Henry. 

The same style, the same severity, the same 
sacramental feeling no doubt marked the Conventual 
Church, and it is sad to think w^hat great and 
pathetic memories perished with its destruction. If 
only the pigstyes and barns built out of these old 
stones could have been the richer for w^hat was lost 
in the transit, they would have been the richest of 
their kind. For Hugh turned to this his first great 
work in the house of Martha with a peculiar relish, 
which was that of a lover more than of a man who 
had merely heaped up stones against the wind. If 



HUGH THE BUn.DER II5 

Lincoln was his Leah, Witham was his dear Rachael. 
Hither he was translated, like Enoch or Elijah, 
from a vexing world for a time every year. The two 
parts of the Charterhouse w^ere the embodiments of 
^^ justice and innocence.^' Here was ^^the vine of 
the Lord of Hosts/' His cell was kept for him, 
and while all the world was hotly harvesting he was 
laying up here his spiritual stores. Here his face 
seemed to burn with the horned light of Moses, 
when he appeared in public. His words were like 
fire and wine and honey, but poised with discretion. 
Yet he never became a fanatical monk, nor like 
Baldwin, whom the Pope addressed as ^' most fervent 
monk, clever abbot, lukewarm bishop, and slack 
archbishop. '^ He warned his monastic brethren 
here that the great question at doom is not. Were you 
monk or hermit ? but Did you show yourself truly 
Christian ? The name is useless, or positively baleful, 
unless a man has the threefold mark — caritas in corde; 
Veritas in ore ; castitas in corpore — of love in the heart, 
truth on the lips, pureness in the body. Here he 
told them that chaste wedlock was as pure as 
continence and virginity, and would be blessed as 
high. He lived as he taught always, but here he 
seemed beyond himself. His buildings at Witham, 
enumerated in the Great Life, and not even planned 
before his time, are the major and minor churches, 
the cells for monks, the cloisters, the brothers' Httle 
houses, and the guest chambers. The lay kitchen 
was a poor building of brushwood and thatch, six or 
seven paces from the guest house, the blaze of 
which, when it caught lire, could be seen from the 
glass windows of the west end of the lay church. 



Il6 HUGH, BISHOP OF LINCOLN 

The wooden cells of the brothers lay round this in a 
ring. The guest house roof was of shingles. This 
kitchen fire took place at the last visit of the bishop 
while he was at the ^^ night lauds.'' He gave over 
the office when it broke out, signed the cross several 
times, and prayed before the altar, while the young 
men fought the flame. He had already often 
ordered a stone kitchen to be built in its place, and 
so no real harm was done, for the fire did not 
spread. The only question which arises is whether 
the present guest house is far enough west to square 
with this story. No mention is made of the fish 
ponds, but they are likely enough to have been 
prepared in his time, for the rule, which never 
allowed meat, did allow fish on festivals. Hugh had 
no notion of starving other people, but used to make 
them ^^ eat well and drink well to serve God well.'' 
He condemned an asceticism run mad, and called it 
vanity and superstition for people to eschew flesh 
when they had no such commandment, and substitute 
for it foreign vegetables^ condiments for fat, and 
expensive fishes. He liked dry bread himself, and 
the drier the tastier, but he did all he could to spare 
others. Consequently, we may credit him with the 
fish ponds. 

His work at Lincoln was on a much larger scale 
and happily much of it is still there, a goodly material 
for wonder, praise and squabbling. It was imposed 
upon him, for he found the Norman building more 
or less in ruins. This building consisted of a long 
nave, with a west front, now standing ; and a choir, 
which ended something east of the present faldstool 
in a bow. At the east end of the nave was a tower, 



HUGH THE BUILDER II7 

and to the north and south of this tower were two 
short transepts, or porches. The tower was either 
not very high or else was shortened, and perhaps 
recapped to make it safe after the earthquake, for 
the comparatively small damage which it did when 
it fell upon the choir proves that it could not have 
been very massive. It fell in Grossetestes' time and 
its details with it. 

The first requisite for building is money : and 
money, as we have seen, was very hard to obtain in 
England just at this juncture. Three means by which 
Hugh raised it are known to us. The austere ideals of 
the Carthusian bishop, his plain vestments, his cheap 
ring, his simple clothes set free a good deal of the 
money of the see for this purpose. Then he issued a 
pastoral summons to the multitude of her sons to 
appear at least once a year at the mother church of 
Lincoln with proper offerings according to their 
power ; especially rural deans, parsons, and priests 
through the diocese were to gather together at 
Pentecost and give alms for the remission of their 
sins and in token of obedience and recollection of 
their Lincoln mother. This, combined with a notice 
of detention of prebend for all non-resident and 
non-represented canons, must have brought the 
faithful up in goodly numbers to their ecclesiastical 
centre. If they were once there, the cracked and 
shored-up building and the bishop^s zeal and 
personal influence might be entrusted to loose their 
purse strings, especially as he led the way, both by 
donation and personal work, for he carried the hod 
and did not disdain to bring mortar and stones up 
the ladder like any mason's 'prentice. Then, thirdly, 



Il8 HUGH, BISHOP OF LINCOLN 

he established or used a Guild of St. Mary, a con- 
fraternity which paid for, and probably worked at, 
the glorious task. Its local habitation was possibly 
that now called John of Gaunt^s stables,' but anyhow 
it stood good for a thousand marks a year. A mark 
is thirteen and fourpence ; and six hundred and 
sixty six pounds odd, in days when an ox cost three 
shillings and a sheep fourpence was a handsome 
sum. It could not have been far short of ^10,000 
of our money. 

It is evident from records and architecture alike 
that the building had to be begun from the very roots 
and foundations. In examining it we had better 
begin with the chroniclers. The Great Life is 
curiously silent about this work, and if we had no 
other records we should almost consider that the 
work was done under, rather than by, the bishop. 
He w^ent to Lincoln ^' about to build on this mountain, 
like a magnificent and peaceful Solomon, a most 
glorious temple,^^ says his laconic friend Adam. 
^^ Also fifteen days before he died Geoffrey de Noiers 
(or Nowers) the constructor or builder of the noble 
fabric, came to see him. The erection of this fabric 
was begun from the foundations, in the renewal of 
the Lincoln church, by the magnificent love of Hugh 
to the beauty of God^s house. ^^ The dying bishop 
thus spoke to him : '^ In that we have had word that 
the lord king wdth the bishops and leading men of 
this whole kingdom are shortly about to meet for a 
general assembly, hasten and finish all that is needful 
for the beauty and adornment about the altar of my 
lord and patron saint, John Baptist, for we wish this 
^ This building itself is of an earlier date. 



HUGH THE BUILDER 119 

to be dedicated by our brother, the Bishop of 
Rochester, when he arrives there with the other 
bishops. Yea, and we ourselves, at the time of the 
aforesaid assembly, shall be present there too. We 
used to desire greatly to consecrate that by our 
ministry ; but since God has disposed otherwise, we 
wish that it be consecrated before we come thither 
on a future occasion.^^ This is all that Adam has to 
tell us. Giraldus Cambrensis says, ^^ Item, he restored 
the chevet of his own church with Parian stones and 
marble columns in wonderful workmanship, and 
reared the whole anew from the foundation with 
most costly work. Similarly, too, he began to con- 
struct the remarkable bishop^s houses, and, by God^s 
help, proposed, in certain hope, to finish them far 
larger and nobler than the former ones.^' Then 
again he says, ^^ Item, he took pains to erect in 
choiceness, the Lincoln church of the blessed Virgin, 
which was built remarkably by a holy man, the first 
bishop of the same place, to wit the blessed 
Remigius, according to the style of that time. To 
make the fabric conformed to the far finer workman- 
ship and very much daintier and cleverer polish of 
modern novelty, he erected it of Parian stones and 
marble columns, grouped alternately and harmoni- 
ously, and which set off one another with varying 
pictures of white and black, but yet with natural 
colour change. The work, now to be seen, is 
unique. ^^ The Legenda says that Hugh carried 
stones and cement in a box for the fabric of the 
mother Church, which he reared nobly from the 
foundations. Other chroniclers say just the same, 
and one adds that he ^' began a remarkable episcopal 



120 HUGH, BISHOP OF LINXOLN 

hall '^ as well. But far the most important account 
we have is that of the metrical Hfe — written between 
1220 and 1235. This gives us some of the 
keys to the intense symbolism of all the designs. 
Since a proper translation would require verse, it 
may be baldly Englished in pedagogic patois^ as 
follows : '* The prudent religion and the religious 
prudence of the pontiff makes a bridge (pons) to 
Paradise, toihng to build Sion in guilelessness, not in 
bloods. And with wondrous art, he built the work of 
the cathedral church ; in building which, he gives not 
only his wealth and the labour of his people, but the 
help of his own sweat ; and often he carries in a 
pannier the carved stones and the sticky Hme. The 
weakness of a cripple, propped on two sticks, obtains 
the use of that pannier, beheving an omen to be in 
it : and in turn disdains the help of the two sticks. 
The diet, which is wont to bow the straight, makes 
straight the bowed. O remai'kable shepherd of the 
flock, and assuredly no liirehng I as the novel con- 
struction of the Church explains. For Mother Sion 
lay cast down, and straitened, wandering, ignorant, 
sick, old, bitter, poor, homely and base : Hugh raises 
her when cast down, enlarges her straitened, guides 
her wandering, teaches her ignorant, heals her sick, 
renews her old, sweetens her bitter, fills her when 
empty, adorns her homely, honours her when base. 
The old mass falls to the foundation and the new 
rises ; and the state of it as it rises, sets forth the 
fitting form of the cross. The dithcult toil unites 
three whole parts ; for the most soUd mass of the 
foundation rises from the centre,* the wall carries the 
' Of the earth. 



HUGH THE BUILDER 121 

roof into the air. [So the foundation is buried in the 
lap of earth, but the wall and roof shew themselves, 
and with proud daring the wall flies to the clouds, 
the roof to the stars.] With the value of the material 
the design of the art well agrees, for the stone roof 
talks as it were with winged birds, spreading its wide 
wings, and like to a flying thing strikes the clouds, 
stayed upon the solid columns. And a sticky liquid 
glues together the white stones, all which the work- 
man's hand cuts out to a nicety. And the wall, 
built out of a hoard of these, as it were disdain- 
ing this thing, counterfeits to unify the adjacent 
parts ; it seems not to exist by art but rather by 
nature ; not a thing united, but one. Another costly 
material of black stones props the work, not like 
this content with one colour, not open with so many 
pores, but shining much with glory and settled with 
firm position ; and it deigns to be tamed by no iron, 
save when it is tamed by cunning, when the surface 
is opened by frequent blows of the grit, and its hard 
substance eaten in with strong acid. That stone, 
beheld, can balance minds in doubt whether it be 
jasper or marble ; but if jasper, dull jasper ; if marble, 
noble marble. Of it are the columns, which so 
surround the pillars that they seem there to represent 
a kind of dance. Their outer surface more polished 
than new horn, with reflected visions, fronts the clear 
stars. So many figures has nature painted there that 
if art, after long endeavour, toils to simulate a like 
picture, scarce may she imitate nature. Likewise has 
the beauteous joining placed a thousand columns there 
in graceful order ; which stable, precious, shining, 
with their stability carry on the whole work of the 



122 HUGH, BISHOP OF LINCOLN 

church, with their preciousness enrich it, with their 
shine make it clear. Their state indeed is lofty and 
high, their polish true and splendid, their order 
handsome and geometric, their beauty fit and useful, 
their use gracious and remarkable, their stability 
unhurt and sharp. A splendid double pomp of 
windows displays riddles to the eyes, inscribing the 
citizens of the Heavenly City and the arms whereby 
they tame the Stygian tyrant.^ And two are greater, 
like two lights ; of these the rounded blaze, looking 
upon the quarters of north and south, with its double 
light, lords it over all windows. They can be com- 
pared to the common stars, but these two are one like 
the sun, the other like the moon. So do these two 
candles lighten the head of the Church. With 
living and various colours they mimic the rainbow, 
not mimic indeed, but rather excel, for the sun when 
it is reflected in the clouds makes a rainbow : these 
two shine without sun, glitter without cloud. 

These things, described but puerilely, have the 
weight of an allegory. Without it seems but as a 
shell, but within lies the kernel. Without it is as 
wax, but within is combed honey ; and fire lightens 
more pleasantly in the shade. For foundation, wall 
roof, white carved stone, marble smooth, conspicuous 
and black, the double order of windows, and the 
twin windows, which, as it were, look upon the 
regions of north and south, are great indeed, in them- 
selves, but figure greater things. 

The foundation is the body, the wall man, the roof 
the spirit, the division of the Church threefold. The 
body possesses the earth, man the clouds, the spirit 
' I.Cy Saints and Lances. 



HUGH THE BUILDER 123 

the stars. The white and carved stone means the 
chaste and wise ; the whiteness is modesty, the 
carving dogma. By the effigy of marble, smooth, 
shining, dark, the bride is figured, guileless, well 
conducted, working. The smoothness very rightly 
means guilelessness, the splendour good conduct, the 
blackness work. The noble cohort of the clergy 
lightening the world with light divine is expressed by 
the clear windows. The corresponding order can 
everywhere be observed. The Canonic is set forth 
by the higher order ; the Vicarious by the lower ; 
and because the canonic handles the business of the 
world, and the busy vicarious fulfils, by its obliga- 
tions, divine matters, the top line of windows shines 
bright with a ring of flowers around it, which 
signifies the varying beauty of the world, the lower 
contains the names of the holy fathers. The twin 
windows, which afl:ord the rounded blaze, are the 
two eyes of the Church, and rightly in these respects 
seem to be, the greater the bishop, and the lesser 
the dean. The North is Satan, and the South the 
Holy Ghost, which the two eyes look upon. For 
the bishop looks upon the South to invite, but the 
dean upon the North to avoid it. The one sees to 
be saved, the other not to be lost. The brow of the 
church beholds with these eyes the candles of 
Heaven and the darkness of Lethe. Thus the 
senseless stones enwrap the mysteries of the living 
stones, the work made with hands sets forth the 
spiritual work ; and the double aspect of the Church 
is clear, adorned with double equipage. A golden 
majesty paints the entry of the choir : and properly 
in his proper image Christ crucified is shewn, and 



124 HUGH, BISHOP OF LINCOLN 

there to a nicety the progress of His Hfe is suggested. 
Not only the cross or image, but the ample sur- 
face of the six columns and two woods, flash with 
tested gold. The capitols' cleave to the Church, 
such as the Roman summit never possessed, the 
wonderful work of which scarce the monied wealth 
of Croesus could begin. In truth their entrances are 
like squares. Within a rounded space lies open, 
putting to the proof, both in material and art, 
Solomon^s temple. If of these the perfection really 
stays, the first Hugh's work will be perfected under 
a second Hugh. Thus then Lincoln boasts of so 
great a sire, who blessed her with so many titles on 
all sides." 

The church itself is the best comment upon this 
somewhat obscure account, and it may be briefly 
divided into Pre-Hugonian, Hugonian, and Post- 
Hugonian parts. The first, the Norman centre of the 
west fagade, does not concern us, except that its lovely 
face often looked down upon the great bishop in his 
dark or tawny cloak trimmed with white lambs' wool, 
which hid his hair shirt. Except for this Norman 
work and the Norman font, it would hardly be an exag- 
geration to say that the whole is by or for Hugh, for 
his shrine, his influence, and his example, completed 
what his work, and his plans, never dreamed about. 
Yet these last are responsible for much. He built a 
cruciform church, beginning with the entrance to the 
choir, with the aisles on either side. The chapels of 
St. Edward Martyr and St. James '^ form the 
base or step of the cross. The east transept, 
with all chapels adjoining, the choristers' vestry, 
' Side chapels. ^ Or of SS, Dennys and Guthlac it may be. 



HUGH THE BUILDER 12$ 

antevestry, dean^s or medicine chapel, with 
its lovely door and the cupboards in the now 
floorless room above it, the vaulted passage and 
chamber adjoining, are all his. So are, possibly, 
the matchless iron screens between the two choirs 
(topped with modern trumpery). South-east of the 
Medicine Chapel is one of St. Hugh's great mystic 
columns, and there are a pair of them. Where the 
Angel Choir now lifts its most graceful form and just 
behind the high altar, rose the semi-hexagonal east 
end, the opened honeycomb, where most fitly was 
placed the altar of St. John Baptist. It was some- 
where in the walls of this forehead that the 
original bishop's eye and dean's eye were once fixed, 
possibly in the rounded eye sockets which once 
stood where Bishop Wordsworth and Dean Butler 
are now buried.^ 

When we look closely at this work, we are 
astonished at the bold freedom, and yet the 
tentative and amateur character of it. The 
builders felt their way as they went along, and well 
they might, for it was not only a new church but a 
new and finer style altogether. They built a wall. It 
was not strong enough, so they buttressed it over the 
mouldings. The almost wayward double arcade 
inside was there apparently, before the imposed 
vaulting shafts were thought about. The stones 
were fully shaped and carved on the floor, and 
then put in their positions. Hardly anything is 
like the next thing. Sometimes the pointed arch is 
outside, as in ^' St. James' " Chapel, sometimes inside 

Mt is a pity in that case that the bishop Hes under the old 
*' dean's eye," and vice veisd. 



126 HUGH, BISHOP OF LINCOLN 

as in ^* St. Edward's." Look up at the strange 
vaulting above the choir, about the irregularity of 
which so much feigned weeping has taken place. It 
represents, maybe, the Spirit blowing where it 
listeth and not given by measure. So, too, mystic 
banded shafts are octagonal for blessedness, and 
they blossom in hidden crockets for the inner flowers 
of the Spirit, and there are honeycombs and dark 
columns banded together in joyful unity, all copied 
from nowhere, but designed by this holy stone poet 
to the glory of God. The pierced tympanum has 
a quatrefoil for the four cardinal virtues, or a trefoil 
for faith, hope, and charity. Compared with the 
lovely Angel Choir which flowered seventy years 
later, under our great King Edward, it may look all 
unpractised, austere ; but Hugh built with sweet 
care, and sense, and honesty, never rioting in the 
disordered emotion of lovely form which owed no 
obedience to the spirit, and which expressed with 
great elaboration — almost nothing. He may have 
valued the work of the intellect too exclusively, but 
surely it cannot be valued too highly ? The work is 
done as well where it does not as w^here it does 
show. 

The bishop's hall, which he began, could not have 
been much more than sketched and founded. It 
was carried on by one of his successors, Hugh de 
Wells (1209-1235), though one would like to believe 
that it was in this great hall that he entertained 
women, godly matrons, and widow^s, who sat by his 
side at dinner, to the wonder of monkish brethren. 
He would lay his clean hands upon their heads and 
bless them, sometimes even gently embrace them, 



HUGH THE BUH.DER 12/ 

and bid them follow the steps of holy women of old. 
Indeed he had quite got over the morbid terror he 
once felt for these guardians of the Divine humanity, 
for he used often to say to them, ^* Almighty God 
has deserved indeed to be loved by the feminine 
sex. He was not squeamish of being born of a 
woman. Yea, and he has granted hereby a mag- 
nificent and right worthy privilege to all women folk. 
For when it is not allowed to man to be or to be 
named the Father of God, yet this has been bestowed 
upon the woman to be the parent of God.^^ The 
traces of his work at the other manor houses are 
wiped out by time. There is nothing at Stow ; 
Buckden was built later ; and the other footprints of 
this building saint are lost upon the sands of time. 



CHAPTER IX 

UNDER KING JOHN 

WHEN King Richard died, John, with a handful 
of followers, gave his host, Arthur of 
Brittany, the slip, and hurried off to Chinon, in 
Touraine. Hence he sent a humble message that 
the Bishop of Lincoln would deign to visit him. The 
reason was obvious. His fate hung in the balance, 
and the best loved and most venerated of English 
bishops would, if he would but recognise him, turn 
that scale against Arthur of Brittany. On the 
Wednesday in Holy Week, April 19th, 1199, Hugh 
left Fontevrault, and the anxious prince rode to 
meet him and to pay him every court. John would 
fain have kept him by his side, but the bishop 
excused himself, and the two travelled back to 
Fontevrault together, and finally parted at Samur. 
They visited the royal tombs at the former place, but 
the prudent nuns would not allow the dubious prince 
inside their walls ^^ because the abbess was not at 
home.'^ John affected to be charmed at their 
scruples, and sent them a pious message, promising 
the bishop that he would shew them great favours. 

The answer was, ^^ You know that I greatly dislike 

128 



UNDER KING JOHN 1 29 

every lie. I shall therefore take care not to tell them 
your lip promises, unless I have proof that you 
certainly mean to fulfil them.'' John at once swore 
that he would fulfil all as soon as might be, and the 
bishop in his presence told the holy women, com- 
mended the prince to them, gave the blessing and 
carried off the royal humbug. He then had a long 
tale of John's good resolutions : he would be pious to 
God, kind to his subjects, and just to all ; he would 
take Hugh for his father and guide, and wait upon 
him. He then shewed him a stone, cased in gold, 
which he wore round his neck, and told him that its 
fortunate owner would lack nothing of his ancestral 
possessions. ^^ Put not your faith in a senseless 
stone," he was told, ^^ but only in the living and true 
heavenly stone, the Lord Jesus Christ. Lay him 
most surely as your heart's foundation and your 
hope's anchor. He truly is so firm and living a stone 
that He crushes all who oppose Him. He suffers not 
those who rest on him to fall, but ever raises them 
to higher things and enlarges them to ampler 
deservings." They reached then the church porch, 
where was a lively sculpture of Doomsday, and on 
the judge's left a company of kings and nobles led to 
eternal fire. The bishop said, '' Let your mind set 
ceaselessly before you the screams and endless 
agonies of these. Let these ceaseless tortures be ever 
in front of your heart's eyes. Let the careful remem- 
brance of these evils teach you how great is the self 
loss which is laid upon those who rule other men for 
a little time, and, ruling themselves ill, are subjects to 
demon spirits in endless agony. These things, while 
one can avoid them, one is wise to fear ever, lest 

10 



130 HUGH, BISHOP OF LINCOLN 

when one cannot avoid them, one should afterwards 
happen ceaselessly to endure them/^ He then pointed 
out that this Day of the Lord was put in the porch, 
so that those who entered to ask for their needs 
should not forget ^' the highest and greatest need of 
all, pardon for sins/^ which they might ask and have 
and be free from pains and glad with eternal joys. 
John seized the bishop's hand and shewed the kings 
on the right. ^^ Nay, lord bishop, you should rather 
shew us these,'' he said '^ whose example and society 
we pray to follow and attain." For a few days he 
seemed exceedingly submissive in deed and speech. 
The beggars who wished him well he thanked with 
bows. The ragged old women who saluted him he 
replied to most gently. But after three days he 
changed his tune and dashed the hopes w^hich had 
begun to spring. Easter Sunday came, and the bishop 
w^as at Mass and John's chamberlain slipped twelve 
gold pieces into his hand, the usual royal offering. 
He was standing (they always stand at Mass) sur- 
rounded by a throng of barons before the bishop and 
gloated upon the gold, tossed it in his hand and 
delayed so long to offer it, that everybody stared. At 
last the bishop, angry at such behaviour, then and 
there said, ^^ Why gaze like that ? " John replied, 
^^ Truly I am having a look at those gold coins of 
yours and thinking that if I had held them a few days 
ago, I should not offer them to you but pop them in 
my own purse. Still, all the same, take them." The 
angry bishop blushed for the king, drew back his arm, 
would not touch such money nor suffer his hand to 
be kissed ; shook his head at him in fury. ^^ Put down 
there what you hold," he said, ^' and go." The king 



UNDER KING JOHN 131 

cast his money into the silver basin and slunk a\va3\ 
John^s insult was all the greater because out of 
Lincoln none of the bishop's people was ever 
allowed to nibble one crumb of the alms. That 
day the bishop had preached upon the conduct and 
future prospects of princes. John neither liked the 
duration nor the direction of the sermon, and sent 
thrice to the preacher to stop his talk and get on 
with the Mass so that he might go to his victuals. 
But not a bit of it. The preacher talked louder and 
longer until all applauded and some wept, and he 
told them how worthily they ought to partake of the 
true Sacramental Bread, who came from heaven and 
gives life to the world. John shared neither in the 
word nor the Sacrament. Neither then nor on 
Ascension Day, when he was made king, did he com- 
municate. Indeed it was said he had never done so 
since he was grown up. 

Next Sunday the court was at Rouen and Arch- 
bishop Walter was investing John with the sacred 
emblems of the Duchy of Normandy during the 
High Mass. A banner on a lance was handed to the 
new duke. John advanced, amid cheers, and the 
foolish cackle of laughter of his former boon com- 
panions. He looked over his shoulder to grin back 
at the fools, his friends, and from his feeble grasp 
the old banner fell upon the pavement ! But Hugh 
had left him for England before this evil omen. 
When the bishop reached Fleche on Easter Monday, 
he went to church to vest for Mass. His servants 
rushed in to say that the guards had seized his horses 
and carts, and robbers had taken some of his pack 
horses. The company, including Gilbert de Glanville 



132 HUGH, BISHOP OF LINCOLN 

of Rochester, his friend, begged him not to say Mass, 
but merely to read the gospel and hurry out of the 
trap. Neither chagrined at his loss, nor moved by 
their terrors, he went deaf and silent to the altar. 
He was not content either with a plain celebration. 
He must need have sandals, tunic, and all the rest of 
the robes, and add a pontifical blessing to the solemn 
celebration. As he was unrobing the magistrates 
came in a fine state of repentance, with restitution, 
safe conducts, and humble w^ords. He jested with 
them and past on to St. Peter's, at Le Mans. Here 
another alarm met them. Arthur's troopers rushed 
the place in the night meaning to catch John. News 
of more robberies and violence came, but thanks to 
the Abbot he got safely on and Dame Constance of 
Brittany sent him many apologies and assurances. 
He reached Sees safely but insisted upon going aside 
for a little pious colloquy with a learned and devout 
Abbot of Persigne, although the country was in a 
very dangerous condition for travelling. He found 
the good man away ; so he said Mass and went on, 
and at last got home to tell them at Lincoln that all 
was peace. His progress was a triumph of delighted 
crowds, for the hearts of his people had been with 
him in all the struggle thus safely ended, and the sea 
of people shouted, ^' Blessed is he that cometh in the 
name of the Lord,'' as their father rode towards his 
cathedral town. The commons evidently felt that 
the hberties of the church were the outworks of the 
liberties of the land. 

But the god of victory is a maimed god, and the 
battles of the world irked Hugh's contemplative soul. 
He wished to lay by his heavy burden of bishopric 



UNDER KING JOHN 1 33 

and to go back to his quiet cell, ttie white wool tunic, 
the silence, and the careful cleaning of trenchers. 
The office of a bishop in his day left little time for 
spiritual tillage either at home or abroad. Not only 
the bishops had to confirm, ordain to all orders, 
consecrate, anoint, impose penance, and excom- 
municate, but they had to decide land questions con- 
cerning lands in frank almoin, all probate and nullity 
of marriage cases, and to do all the legal work of a 
king^s baron besides. The judicial duties lay heavily 
upon him. He used to say that a bishop's case was 
harder than a lord warden's or a mayor's, for he had 
to be always on the bench ; they only sometimes. 
They might look after their family affairs, but he 
could hardly ever handle the cure of souls. For the 
second or third time he sent messengers to ask Papal 
leave to resign, but Innocent, knowing that ^^ no one 
can safely be to the fore who would not sooner be 
behind," rejected the petition with indignation ; and 
Pharaoh-like increased his tasks the more by making 
him legate in nearly every important case of appeal. 
People who had nothing to rely upon except the 
justice of their cause against powerful opponents, 
clamoured for the Lincoln judgments, which then 
neither fear nor hope could trim, and which were as 
skilful as they were upright, so that men, learned in 
the law, ascribed it to the easy explanation of miracles 
that a comparative layman should steer his course so 
finely. 

In the various disputes between monks and bishops, 
which were a standing dish in most dioceses, he took 
an unbiassed line. In the long fight waged by Arch- 
bishop Baldwin first and then by Hubert Walter with 



134 HUGH, BISHOP OF LINCOLN 

the monks of Canterbury, which began in 1186, and 
was not over until Hugh was dead, he rather favoured 
the side of the monastery. Yet we find him speaking 
midta aspera, many stinging things to their spokesman, 
and recommending, as the monk said, prostration 
before the archbishop. His words to the archbishop 
have been already quoted. With Carlyle's Abbot 
Sampson and the Bishop of Ely he was appointed by 
Innocent to hush the long brawl. The Pope, tired and 
angry, wrote (September, 1199) to the commissioners 
to compel the archbishop, even with ecclesiastical 
censures. They reply rather sharply to his holiness 
that he is hasty and obscure ; and so the matter 
dragged on. Then in 1195 the inevitable Geoffrey 
Plantagenet, the bastard, Archbishop of York, before 
mentioned, has a lively dispute with his canons. Hugh 
is ordered by the Pope to suspend him, but w^ould 
rather be suspended (by the neck) himself. Geoffrey 
certainly was a little extreme, even for those days — 
a Broad Churchman indeed. He despises the Sacra- 
ments, said the canons, he hunts, hawks, fights, does 
not ordain, dedicate, or hold synods, but chases the 
canons with armed men and robs them ; but Hugh, 
though he cannot defend the man, seems to know 
better of him, and at any rate will not be a mere 
marionette of Rome. Geoffrey, indeed, came out 
nobly in the struggles with king John in later story, 
as a defender of the people. Then there is the 
dispute between the Bishop of Coventry, another 
striking bishop, who brought stout fellows against 
the saucy monks. He had bought their monastery 
for three hundred marks of the king, and when they 
would not budge, he chased them away with beat- 



UNDER KING JOHN I35 

ing and maiming, sacked their house, burnt their 
charters, and so on. Hugh was against this too 
vigorous gentleman, who was clearly indefensible ; but 
it was by no means because he was blindly prejudiced 
in favour of monks, for he seems to have supported 
the Bishop of Rochester against his monks. These 
disputes of astonishing detail, are very important in 
the history of the church, as by their means the 
Papal Empire grew to a great height of power ; and 
however little the bishops^ methods commend them- 
selves, the monasteries, which became rebel castles 
in every diocese, were very subversive of discipline, 
and their warfare equally worldly. 

In cases less ecclesiastical, we have a glimpse of 
Hugh defending two young orphans against Jordan 
of the Tower, the most mighty of Londoners. This 
powerful robber of the weak came to the court with 
an army of retainers, king^s men and London citizens, 
to overawe all opposition. The ^^ father of orphans ^^ 
made a little speech on the occasion which has come 
down to us. ^^ In truth, Jordan, although you may 
have been dear to us, yet against God we can yield 
nothing to you. But it is evident that against your 
so many and great abetters it is useless not only for 
these little ones to strive, but even for ourselves and 
our fellow judges. So what we shall do, we wish you 
to know. Yet I speak for my own self. I shall free 
my soul. I shall therefore write to my lord the Pope 
that you alone in these countries traverse his jurisdic- 
tion ; you alone strive to nullify his authority.'^ The 
vociferous and well-backed Jordan took the hint. 
He dismounted from his high horse, and the orphans 
got their own again. But these and like duties were 



136 HUGH, BISHOP OF LINCOLN 

a heavy cross to Hugh. He hoped to be excused of 
God because he obeyed orders, rather than rewarded 
because he did well. Like Cowley, he looked upon 
business as ''the frivolous pretence of human lusts 
to shake off innocence." He would not even look at 
his own household accounts, but delegated such work 
to trustworthy folk, while these behaved well. If 
they misbehaved he quickly detected it and sent them 
packing. 

We have now reached the year a.d. 1200. King 
John has been crowned for a year. Hugh was not 
present at this ceremony, and the king, anxious still 
for his support, sends for him to be present at the 
great peace he was concluding with France. By this 
treaty the Dauphin was to marry Blanche of Castile 
and become Earl of Evreux, a dangerous earldom, 
and Philip was to drop the cause of young Arthur and 
give up debateable Vexin. Hugh also was tempted 
over seas by the hope of visiting his old haunts, 
which he felt must be done now or never, for health 
and eyesight were failing him, and he needed this 
refreshment for his vexed soul. It was in the Chateau 
Gaillard again that he met the king, left him in the 
sweet spring time at the end of May, for a pilgrim 
tour to shrines and haunts of holy men living and 
dead — a pilgrimage made possible by the new^ peace. 

Here it must be confessed that modern sympathy 
is apt to falter, for though we can understand the zeal 
of American tourists for chips of palaces and the 
communal moral code peculiar to archaeologists, 
coin collectors, and umbrella snatchers, we cannot 
understand the enthusiasm which the manliest, 
holiest, and robustest minds then displayed for relics, 



UNDER KING JOHN 137 

for stray split straws and strained twigs from the 
fledged bird^s nests whence holy souls had fled to 
other skies. To us these things mean but little ; but 
to Hugh they meant very much. The facts must be 
given, and the reader can decide whether they are 
beauty spots or warts upon the strong, patient, brave 
face upon which they appear. 

His first objective, when he left the Andelys, was 
Meulan, and there he ^' approached St. Nicasius.^^ This 
saint, a very fine fellow, had been Bishop of Rheims, 
eight hundred years before. When the Vandals 
invaded the land he had advanced to meet them 
with a procession of singers and got an ugly sword 
cut, which lopt off a piece of his head. He went on 
still singing till he dropped dead. This brave fellow's 
skull Hugh took in his hands, worshipped the saint, 
gave gold ; and then tried hard to tweak out one of 
his teeth : but such dentistry was unavailing. He 
then put his fingers into the nostrils which had so 
often drawn in the sweet odour of Christ and got 
with ease a lovely little bone, which had parted the 
eyes, kissed it and felt a richer hope of being directed 
into the way of peace and salvation ; for so great a 
bishop would certainly fix his spiritual eyes upon him 
after this. 

Next he went to St. Denis, where he prayed long 
at the tombs of the saints. The scholars of Paris, of 
all breeds, turned out in crowds to see a man, who, 
after St. Nicholas, had done so much good to clerks. 
Kisses, colloquies and invitations rained upon him, but 
he chose to lodge in the house of his relative Reimund. 
This man he had made Canon of Lincoln, and he 
afterwards refused to buy off King John and became 



138 HUGH, BISHOP OF LINCOLN 

an exile for conscience and the patron of exiles, and 
thus was in life and character a true son of St. Hugh. 
Among the visitors here were the Dauphin Lewis 
and Arthur of Brittany. The latter turned up his 
nose when told to live in love and peace with Uncle 
John ; but Lewis carried off the bishop to cheer his 
w^eeping political bride Blanche, lately bartered into 
the match. The good bishop walked to the palace, 
and Blanche bore a merry face and a merry heart 
after he had talked with her. 

The next place was Troyes, and here a wretch 
came with a doleful story. He had been bailiff to? 
the Earl of Leicester, had torn a rogue from 
sanctuary at Brackley ; had been excommunicated 
by Hugh, with all his mates. They had submitted 
and been made to dig up the putrid body and carry 
it a mile, clad only in their drawers, be whipped at 
every church door they passed, bury the body with 
their own hands, and then come to Lincoln for more 
flogging: and all this in the winter. This sentence 
frightened the bailiff, who bolted ; but ill-luck dogged 
him. He lost his place, his money, and at last came 
to beg for shrift and punishment. Hugh gave him a 
seven years' penance and he went on his way rejoicing. 

The next great place was Vienne on the Rhone. 
Here w^ere the ashes of St. Anthony of the Desert, 
wrapped in the tunic of Paul, the first hermit. The 
Carthusian Bruno had caught the enthusiasm for 
solitude from these ambulatory ashes, which had 
travelled from Alexandria to Constantinople and so 
to Vienne in 1070. Of course they were working 
miracles, chiefly upon those afflicted by St. Anthony's 
fire. The medical details are given at some length. 



UNDER KING JOHN 139 

and the cures described in the Great Life. For the 
general reader it is enough to say that Hugh said 
Mass near the precious but plain chest, and that he 
gave a good sum for the convalescent home v^here 
the poor sufferers were housed. Whether change of 
air, a hearty diet, and strong faith be enough to arrest 
this (now rare) disease is a scientific question rather 
than a theological one ; but if, as we are told, St. 
Anthony sent thunder bolts upon castles and keeps 
where his pilgrims were maltreated, his spirit was 
somewhat of that Boanerges type which is flatly 
snubbed in the Gospel. From Vienne Hugh went to 
his own Grenoble among those mountains which have, 
as Ruskin says, ^^ the high crest or wall of cliff on 
the top of their slopes, rising from the plain first in 
mounds of meadow-land and bosses of rock and 
studded softness of forest ; the brown cottages peep- 
ing through grove above grove, until just where the 
deep shade of the pines becomes blue or purple in 
the haze of height, a red wall of upper precipice 
rises from the pasture land and frets the sky with 
glowing serration.'^ ^ A splendid procession came out 
to welcome him, and the city was hung with festoons 
of flowers and gay silken banners. He was led with 
chaunting to the cathedral of St. John Baptist, his 
particular saint, and that of his Order, upon the very 
feast of the great herald. There he sang the High 
Mass with intense devoutness, and after the gospel 
preached to the people, ^^ giving them tears to 
drink,^' but in moderation, for he begged all their 
prayers for his littleness and unworthiness, whereas 
they knew quite well what a good and great fellow 
* " Modern Painters," iv. 253. 



^jgg^a 



140 HUGH, BISHOP OF LINCOLN 

he was. Then he christened his own nephew, the 
heir of Avalon, whose uncle Peter was present, and 
the Bishop of Grenoble was godfather. The hitherto 
unbaptised boy was actually seven years old. Perhaps 
he had waited for Uncle Hugh to christen him, and 
when he had that honour he w^as not named Peter, 
as they proposed, but John, in honour of the place 
and day. Adam records that he taught the little 
fellow his alphabet and to spell from letters placed 
above the altar of St. John Baptist at Bellay. 

Then he left for the Grande Chartreuse, having to 
foot it most of the way up the mountains, sweating 
not a Httle, for he was of some diameter, but he out- 
walked his companions. He took care to drop in 
while the brothers were having their midday siestaj 
and he was careful not to be of the least trouble. 
Indeed, for three wrecks he put off the bishop, as he 
did at Witham, and his insignia all but the ring, and 
became a humble monk once more. The clergy 
and the laity hurried to see him from the district, 
and the poor jostled to behold their father ; and each 
one had dear and gracious words, and many found 
his hand second his generous tongue. Some days he 
spent at the lower house. Here, too, he compounded 
an old and bitter feud between the bishop and the 
Count of Geneva whereby the one was exiled and 
the other excommunicate. 

Near the end of his stay he made a public present 
to the House, a silver casket of relics, which he used 
to carry in his hand in procession at dedications. 
These were only a part of his collection, for he had a 
ring of gold and jewels, four fingers broad, with 
hollow spaces for relics. At his ardent desire and 



UNDER KING JOHN I4I 

special entreaty the monks of Fleury once gave him a 
tooth from the jaws of St. Benedict, the first founder 
and, as it were, grandfather of his and other Orders. 
This came with a good strip of shroud to boot, and 
the goldsmith appeared, tools and all, warned by a 
dream, from Banbury to Dorchester to enshrine the 
precious ivory. The shred of shroud was liberally 
divided up among abbots and religious men, but the 
tooth, after copious kissing, was sealed up in the 
ring. At Fechamp once (that home of relics !) they 
kept a bone of St. Mary Magdalen, as was rashly 
asserted, sewed up in silks and linen. He begged 
to see it, but none dared show it : but he was 
not to be denied. Whipping up a penknife from 
his notary, he had off the covers pretty quickly, and 
gazed at and kissed it reverently. Then he tried 
to break off a bit with his fingers, but not a pro- 
cess would come away. He then tried to nibble a 
snippet, but in vain. Finally, he put the holy bone 
to his strong back teeth and gave a hearty scrunch. 
Two tit-bits came off, and he handed them to the 
trembling Adam, saying, ^^ Excellent man, keep these 
for us.'^ The abbots and monks were first struck 
dumb, then quaked, and then boiled with indignation 
and wrath. ^^ Oh ! oh ! Abominable ! " they yelled. 
^* We thought the bishop wanted to worship these 
sacred and holy things, and lo ! he has, with doggish 
ritual, put them to his teeth for mutilation. ^^ While 
they were raging he quieted them with words which 
may give us the key to such otherwise indecent 
behaviour. Suppose they had been having a great 
Sacramental dispute, and some, as is likely, had 
maintained against the bishop that the grinding of 



142 HUGH, BISHOP OF LINCOLN 

the Host by the teeth of any communicant meant 
the grinding of Christ's very body, then it becomes 
evident that Hugh put this their beUef to rather a 
rough proof, or reproof. Anyhow, he posed them 
with this answer, '' Since a short time back we 
handled together the most saintly body of the Saint of 
Saints with fingers granted unworthy ; if we handled 
It with our teeth or lips, and passed It on to our 
inwards, why do we not also in faith so treat the 
members of his saints for our defence, their worship, 
and the deepening of our memory of them, and 
acquire, so far as opportunity allows, what we are to 
keep with due honour ? '^ 

At Peterborough they had the arm of St. Oswald, 
which had kept fresh for over five centuries. A 
supple nerve which protruded Hugh had sliced off 
and put in this wonderful ring. This, though he had 
offered it to the high altar at Lincoln, he would have 
left to the Charterhouse ; but Adam reminded him of 
the fact, so instead thereof he ordered a golden box 
full of the relics he gave them to be sent after his 
death. 

With mutual blessings he took his last leave of the 
Grande Chartreuse, and left it in the body, though 
his heart and mind could never be dislodged from 
its desert place. This place was his father and his 
mother, but Lincoln, he did not forget, was his wife. 



CHAPTER X 

HOMEWARD BOUND 

AFTER a brief visit to the Priory of St. Domninus 
Hugh made for Villarbenoit, his old school and 
college in one ; but first he went to Avalon Castle, 
where his stout backers and brothers, William and 
Peter, ruled over their broad lands, who always had 
heartened and encouraged him in his battles for the 
liberties of the Church. Here ^' nobles, middle- 
class men, and the lowest people ^^ received him 
with delight, and he spent two days at this his birth- 
place, and so on to Villarbenoit, and a fine dance his 
coming made for them all. He gave the Church a 
noble Bible worth ten silver marks, and passed to the 
cell of St. Maximin. Here aged hobblers and white- 
haired seniors, bowed mothers and women advanced 
in years, walled round him in happy throng. The 
bright-eyed lady of his unrest, possibly, was among 
these last, and they all bore witness to his early 
holiness, and prophesied his future niche in the 
calendar. After one more night at Avalon he set out 
for England. 

At Bellay the incautious canons allowed him to 
undo a sacred little bundle which held three fingers 

143 



144 HUGH, BISHOP OF LINCOLN 

of St. John Baptist, which they trusted him to kiss, 
although for many years no one had even looked 
upon such awful articulations. After confession, 
absolution, and prayer the bones were bared, and he 
touched ^' the joints which had touched God^s holy 
head," kissed them, and signed the prostrate wor- 
shippers with them with the holy sign. Then he cut 
off a good piece of the ancient red cloth which had 
covered them and handed it to Adam. Thence he 
visited three more Charterhouses. In one of these, 
Arvieres, he met a man of his own age, Arthault by 
name, who had resigned his bishopric and was end- 
ing his days as a holy monk. In full chapter the 
bishop and the ex-bishop met. Arthault, knowing 
Hugh had been at the peace-making between France 
and England, asked him to tell them the terms of the 
peace ; but the latter smiled and said, *' My lord 
father, to hear and carry tales is allowable to bishops, 
but not to monks. Tales must not come to cells or 
cloister. We must not leave tow^ns and carry tales 
to solitude.'^ So he turned the talk to spiritual 
themes. Perhaps he saw that it is easier to resign 
a bishopric than to forsake the world altogether. 

The next important place was Clugny, where they 
read him a chapter from St. Gregory's ^^ Pastoral 
Care," and extorted the compliment from him that 
their well-ordained house would have made him a 
Clugniac if he had not been a Carthusian. Thence 
he went to Citeaux and said Mass for the Assump- 
tion (August 15th), and passed on to Clairvaux. 
Here he met John, the ex-Archbishop of Lyons, 
who was meditating away the last days of his life. 
Hugh asked him what scriptures most helped his 



HOMEWARD BOUND 145 

thoughts, and the reply must have struck an answer- 
ing chord in the questioner, ^^ To meditate entirely 
upon the Psalms has now usurped my whole inward 
being. Inexhaustible refreshment always comes new 
from these. Such is fresh daily, and always delicious 
to the taste of the inner man.'^ Hughes devotion to 
the Psalms is evidenced by many passages in his life, 
and not least by the fact that he divided the whole 
Psalter among the members of the Chapter so that it 
should be recited throughout every day. His own 
share included three Psalms, i., ii., and iii., and if 
the reader tries to look at these through the saint^s 
eyes he will see much in them that he has not hitherto 
suspected to be there. 

He stopped a couple of days at Rheims, and was 
astonished at the good store of books the library 
owned. He ^' blamed the slothful carelessness of 
modern times, which not only failed to imitate the 
literary activity of the Fathers in making and writing 
books, but neither read nor reverently treated the 
sacred manuscripts the care of the Fathers had pro- 
vided.'^ His own conduct in this respect, both at 
Witham and Lincoln, was far otherwise. He took 
pains about the library at each place. His gifts to 
Lincoln were — (i) Two great volumes of sermons by 
the CathoHc doctors for the whole year. (2) A little 
book of the Father^s Life with a red covering. (3) A 
Psalter with a large gloss. ^ (4) A Homeliary in 
stag's leather, beginning ^^ Erunt signal And (5) A 
Martyrology with the text of the four Gospels. At 
Rheims, too, he also saw and worshipped the vessel 
of holy oil, which was used for anointing the kings of 
' Which alone still survives. 
II 



146 HUGH, BISHOP OF LINCOLN 

France. Then he made his way to the northern coast 
to St. Omer's Camp. He would not put to sea at once 
lest he should fail of his Mass on Our Lady's birthday. 
He had been unwell for some days wdth quartan fever, 
and tried bleeding, but it did him no good. He could 
not eat, but was obliged to go and lie dow^n upon his 
small bed. He broke into violent sweats, and for 
three days hardly tasted food. On the 7th of Sep- 
tember he would travel ten miles to Clercmaretz 
Abbey to keep the feast. He slept in the infirmary, 
where two monks waited on him, but could get him 
to eat nothing. He said there his last Mass but one, 
and still fasting w^ent back to St. Omers. He felt a 
good deal better after this, and went on to Wissant, 
where he made the usual invocations to Our Lady and 
St. Ann, and had a safe, swift passage, and imme- 
diately upon landing said his last Mass, probably at 
St. Margaret's Church, in Dover. He never missed a 
chance of saying Mass if he could, though it was not 
said daily in his time. But he would not allow his 
chaplain to celebrate if he had been lately bled, 
reproved him for the practice, and when he did it 
again very sharply rebuked him. 

From Dover he went to Canterbury, and prayed 
long and earnestly, first at the Saviour altar and then 
at the tombs of the holy dead,^ and especially at the 
mausoleum of St. Thomas. The monastic flock (still 
sub jiidice) led him forth with deep respect. The 
news spread that he was ill, and the royal justiciaries 
and barons visited him and expressed their sympathy 
and affection in crowds, which must have consider- 

' Dunstan, Alphege, Lanfranc, Anselm, and others pre- 
sumably. 



HOMEWARD BOUND 147 

ably heightened his temperature. He explained to 
them with placid face that the scourge of the Lord 
was sweet to His servants, and what he said he 
enacted. ^^ But He, the head Father of the Family, 
who had put forth His hand to cut him down, with- 
drew not the sickle from reaping the stalk, which he 
had now seen white to the harvest." One of the 
signs of this was the growing dimness of his eyes, 
much tried by the dust and heat of travel. But he 
would not have them doctored. ^^ These eyes will 
be good enough for us as long as we are obliged to 
use them," he said. He crawled painfully on to 
London, part of the way on horseback and part by 
water, and in a high fever took to his bed in his own 
house, praying to be allowed to reach his anxious 
family at Lincoln. ^^ I shall never be able to keep 
away from spiritual presence with our dearest Sons 
in Christ, whether I be present or absent in the body. 
But concerning health or my bodily presence, yea, 
and concerning my whole self, may the will be done 
of the holy Father which is in Heaven." He had 
ceased to wish to live, he told his chaplain, for he 
saw the lamentable things about to come upon the 
Church of England. ^^ So it is better for us to die 
than to live and see the evil things for this people 
and the saints which are ahead. For doubtless upon 
the family of King Henry the scripture must needs 
be fulfilled which says there shall not be ^ deep 
rooting from bastard slips ^ and the ^ seed of an 
unrighteous bed shall be rooted out.' So the 
modern King of the French will avenge his holy 
father Lewis upon the offspring of wickedness, to 
wit, of her who rejected a stainless bed with him 



148 HUGH, BISHOP OF LINCOLN 

and impudently was joined with his rival, the king of 
the English. For this, that French Philip will destroy 
the stock royal of the English, like as an ox is wont 
to Hck up the grass to its roots. Already three of 
her sons have been cut off by the French, two kings 
that is, and one prince. The fourth, the survivor, 
will have short peace at their hands.^^ The next 
day, St. Matthew's, was his episcopal birthday, and 
he kept it up by having, for the first time in his life, 
the anointing of the sick. He first made a most 
searching confession to his chaplain, and then to the 
Dean of Lincoln, the Precentor, and the Archdeacon 
of Northampton.^ He hesitated not to confess sins 
often before confessed to many, and made so straight, 
keen, and full a story of what he had left undone and 
what he had done that they never heard the like ; and 
he often repeated, ^^ The evildoing is mine, truly, solely, 
and wholely. The good, if there is any, is not so. It 
is mixed with evil ; it is everywhere gross with it. So 
it is neither truly nor purely good.'' The Sacrament 
was brought him at nine o'clock the next day, and he 
flung himself from his bed, clad in his hair shirt and 
cowl, with naked feet, knelt, worshipped, and prayed 
long before it, recalling the infinite benefits of the 
Saviour to the children of men, commending his sin- 
fulness to Christ's mercy, asking for help to the end 
and imploring with tears never to be left. Then he 
was houselled and anointed. He said, ^^ Now let our 
doctors and our diseases meet, as far as may be. In 
our heart there will be less trouble about them both. 
I have committed myself to Him, received Him, shall 
hold Him, stick to Him, to whom it is good to stick, 
' Roger de Roldeston, William de Blois, and Richard of Kent. 



HOMEWARD BOUND 149 

Whom to hold is blessed. If a man receives Him 
and commits himself to Him he is strong and safe/' 
He was then told to make his will, and said it was a 
tiresome new custom, for all he had was not his, but 
belonged to the church he ruled ; but lest the civil 
officer should take all, he made his will. ^^ If any 
temporal goods should remain after my death in the 
bishopric, now here all which I seem to possess I 
hand over to the Lord Jesus Christ, to be bestowed 
upon the poor.'' The executors were the dean and 
the two archdeacons. After this simple but not sur- 
prising will he called for his stole and anathematized 
all who should knavishly keep back, or violently carry 
off, any of his goods, or otherwise frustrate his 
executors. 

He grew worse. He confessed daily the lightest 
thought or word of impatience against his nurses. 
He was much in prayer, and he had the offices said 
at the right times however ill he was. He sang with 
the psalm-singers while he could. If they read or 
sang carelessly or hurriedly, he chastened them with 
a terrible voice and insisted upon clear pronunciation 
and perfect time. He made every one stand and sit 
by turns, so that while one set were resting the other 
were reverencing the divine and angelic presences. 
He had always been punctilious about the times of 
prayer and used always to withdraw from the bench 
to say his offices when they were due. 

King John came in one day, but the bishop, who 
could sit up for his food, neither rose nor sat to greet 
him. The king said that he and his friends would 
do all they could for him. Then he sent out the 
courtiers and sat long and talked much and blandly ; 



150 HUGH, BISHOP OF LINCOLN 

but Hugh answered very little, but shortly asked him 
to see to his and other bishops' wills and commended 
Lincoln to his protection ; but he despaired of John 
and would not waste his beautiful words upon him. 
After the king, the archbishop came several times, 
and promised also to do what he could for him. 
The last time he came he hinted that Hugh must 
not forget to ask pardon from any he had unjustly 
hurt or provoked by word or deed. No answer from 
the bed ! Then he became a little more expHcit and 
said that he, Hugh's spiritual father and primate, 
had often been most bitterly provoked, and that 
really his forgiveness was most indispensible. The 
reply he got was more bracing than grateful. Arch- 
bishops rarely hear such naked verities. ^^ It is quite 
true, and I see it well when I ponder all the hidden 
things of our conscience, that I have often provoked 
you to angers. But I do not find a single reason for 
repenting of it ; but I know this, that I must grieve 
that I did not do it oftener and harder. But if my 
life should have to be passed longer with you I most 
firmly determine, under the eyes of all-seeing God, 
to do it much oftener than before. I can remember 
how, to comply with you, I have often and often 
been coward enough to keep back things which I 
ought to have spoken out to you, and which you 
v\^ould not well have brooked to hear, and so by 
my own fault I have avoided offence to you rather 
than to the Father which is in Heaven. On this 
count, therefore, it is that I have not only trans- 
gressed against God heavily and unbishoply, but 
against your fatherhood or primacy. And I humbly 
ask pardon for this." Exit the archbishop ! 



HOMEWARD BOUND 151 

Now his faithful Boswell gives elaborate details of 
Hughes long dying, not knowing that his work would 
speak to a generation which measures a man's favour 
with God by the oily slipperiness with which he 
shuffles off his clay coil. It was a case of hard 
dying, redoubled paroxysms, fierce fever, and bloody 
flux, and dreadful details. He would wear his sack- 
cloth, and rarely change it, though it caked into 
knots which chafed him fiercely. But, though the 
rule allowed, he would not go soft to his end, how- 
ever much his friends might entreat him to put off 
the rasping hair. ^' No, no, God forbid that I should. 
This raiment does not scrape, but soothe ; does not 
hurt, but help,'' he answered sternly. He gave 
exact details of how he was to be laid on ashes 
on the bare earth at the last with no extra sackcloth. 
No bishops or abbots being at hand to commend 
him at the end, the monks of Westminster were to 
send seven or eight of their number and the Dean 
of St. Paul's a good number of singing clerks. His 
body was to be washed with the greatest care, to 
fit it for being taken to the holy chapel of the 
Baptist at Lincoln, and laid out by three named 
persons and no others. When it reached Lincoln 
it was to be arrayed in the plain vestments of his 
consecration, which he had kept for this. One Httle 
light gold ring, with a cheap water sapphire in it, he 
selected from all that had been given him. He had 
worn it for functions, and would bear it in death, 
and have nothing about him else to tempt folk to 
sacrilege. The hearers understood, foolishly, from 
this that he knew his body would be translated 
after its first sepulture, and for this reason he had 



152 HUGH, BISHOP OF LINCOLN 

it cased in lead and solid stone that no one should 
seize or even see his ornaments when he was moved. 
^^ You will place me/^ he said, ^^ before the altar of 
my aforesaid patron, the Lord's forerunner, w^here 
there seems fitting room near some wall, in such 
wise that the tomb shall not inconveniently block 
the floor, as we see in many churches, and cause 
incomers to trip or fall.'' Then he had his beard 
and nails trimmed for death. Some of his ejacula- 
tions in his agonies are preserved. ^^ O kind God, 
grant us rest. O good Lord and true God, give us 
rest at last." When they tried to cheer him by 
saying that the paroxysm was over he said, ^^ How 
really blessed are those to whom even the last 
judgment day will bring unshaken rest.'^ They told 
him his judgment day would be the day w^hen he 
laid by the burden of the flesh. But he would not 
have it. ^^The day when I die will not be a judg- 
ment day, but a day of grace and mercy," he said. 
He astonished his physicians by the robust way in 
which he would move, and his manly voice bated 
nothing of its old power, though he spoke a little 
submissively. The last lection he heard w^as the story 
of Lazarus and Martha, and wiien they reached the 
words, ^^ Lord, if Thou hadst been here, my brother 
had not died," he bade them stop there. The funeral 
took up the tale where the reader left off, ^^ I am the 
Resurrection and the Life." 

They reminded him that he had not confessed any 
miscarriages of justice of which he had been guilty 
through private love or hate. He answered boldly, 
^' I never remember that I knowingly wrested the 
truth in a judicial sentence either from hate or love, 



HOMEWARD BOUND I S3 

no, nor from hope or fear of any person or thing 
whatsoever. If I have gone av^^ry in judgments it 
was a fault either of my own ignorance or assuredly 
of my assistants/^ 

The leeches hoped much from meat, and, though 
the Order forbade it, his obedience was transferred 
to Canterbury. His friends posted off and got not 
only a permit, but a straight order enjoining this diet 
upon him. He said that neither for taste nor for 
medicine could he be prevailed upon to eat flesh. 
^^ But to avoid offending so many reverend men, 
and, too, lest, even in the state of death, we should 
fail to follow in the footsteps of Him who became 
obedient even unto death, let flesh be given to us. 
Now at the last we will freely eat it, sauced with 
brotherly love.^' When he was asked what he would 
like he said that he had read that the sick fathers 
had been given pig's trotters. But he made small 
headway with these unseasonable viands or with the 
poor ^^ little birds '^ they next gave him. On the 
i6th of November, at sunset, the monks and clerks 
arrived. Hugh had strength to lay his hand upon 
Adam's head and bless him and the rest. They said 
to him, '^ Pray the Lord to provide a profitable pastor 
for your church," but their voices were dim in his 
ears, and only when they had asked it thrice he said, 
^^ God grant it ! " The third election brought in 
great Grosseteste. 

The company then withdrew for compline, and 
as they ended the xci. Psalm, ^^ I will deliver him 
and bring him to honour,'^ he was laid upon the 
oratory floor on the ashes, for he had given the 
sign ; and while they chaunted Niuic Diniillis with 



154 HUGH, BISHOP OF LINCOLN 

a quiet face he breathed out his gallant soul, passing, 
as he had hoped, at Martinmas-tide ^'from God's 
camp to His palace, from His hope to His sight,^' 
in the time of that saint whom he greatly admired 
and closely resembled. 

They washed his white, brave body, sang over it, 
watched it all night in St. Mary's Church, ringed it 
with candles, sang solemn Masses over it, embalmed 
it with odours, and buried the bowels near the altar 
in a leaden vessel. All London flocked, priests with 
crosses and candles, people weeping silently and 
aloud, every man triumphant if he could even touch 
the bier. Then they carried him in the wind and 
the rain, with lads on horseback holding torches 
(which never all went out at once), back to his 
own children. They started on Saturday^ for Hert- 
ford, and by twilight next day they had reached 
Biggleswade on the Ivell, where he had a house, 
wherein the company slept. The mourning crowds 
actually blocked the way to the church. The bier 
was left in the church that Sunday night. 

By Monday they got to Buckden, and on the 
Tuesday they had got as far as Stamford, but the 
crowds were so great here that hardly could they 
fight their way through till the very dead of the 
night. The body, of course, was taken into the 
church ; and a pious cobbler prayed to die, and lo ! 
die he did, having only just time for confession, 
shrift, and his will ; and way was made for him in 
death, though he could not get near the bier in life. 
The storj' recalled to Adam's mind a saying of his 
late master when people mourned too immoderately 
' November i8, 1200. 



HOMEWARD BOUND 155 

for the dead—^^ What are you about ? What are 
you about ? By Saint Nut ^^ (that was his innocent 
oath), ^^ by Saint Nut, it would indeed be a great 
misfortune for us if we were never allowed to die.^^ 
He would praise the miraculous raising of the dead, 
but he thought that sometimes a miraculous granting 
of death is still more to be admired. At Stamford 
they bought horn lanterns instead of wax torches, for 
these last guttered so in the weather that the riders 
got wax all over their hands and clothes. Then 
they made for Ancaster, and on Thursday they came 
to Lincoln. Here were assembled all the great men 
of the realm, who came out to meet the bier. The 
kings of England and Scotland, the archbishops, 
bishops, abbots, and barons were all there. No 
man so great but he thought himself happy to help 
carry that bier up the hill. Shoulders were reUeved 
by countless hands, these by other hands. The 
greatest men struggled for this honour. The rains 
had filled the streets with mud above the ankles, 
sometimes up to men^s knees. All the bells of the 
town tolled and every church sang hymns and spiri- 
tual songs. Those who could not touch the bier 
tossed coins upon the hearse which held the body. 
Even the Jews came out and wept and did what 
service they could. 

The body was taken to a bye place off the 
cathedral^ and dressed as he had ordered — with 
ring, gloves, staff, and the plain robes. They wiped 
the balsam from his face, and found it first white, 
but then the cheeks grew pink. The cathedral was 

' Possibly on the site where St. Hugh's chapel now stands in 
desolation. 



156 HUGH, BISHOP OF LINXOLN 

blocked with crowds, each man bearing a candle. 
They came in streams to kiss his hands and feet 
and to offer gold and silver, and more than fort}' 
marks were given that day. John of Leicester laid 
a distich at his feet, much admired then, but ^' bald 
as his crown " to our ears : 

" Staff to the bishops, to the monks a measure true, 
Counsel for schools, kings' hammer — such behold was Hugh ! " 

The next day at the funeral his cheap vestments 
were torn in pieces by the relic-hunting, which it must 
be confessed he had done nothing to check ; and 
he was buried near the wall not far from the altar 
of St. John Baptist, and, as seemed more suitable for 
the crowds who came there, on the northern side of 
the building itself.^ 

This tremendous funeral long lived in men^s 
memoiy, and there is a far prettier verse about it 
than the old distich of John — 

" A' the bells o' men-ie Lincoln 
Without men's hands were rung, 
And a' the books o' merrie Lincoln 
Were read without man's tongue ; 
And ne'er was such a burial 
Sin' Adam's days begun." 

Passing by the shower of gold rings, necklaces, 
and bezants which were given at his shrine, it is 
certain that the coals of enthusiasm were blown by 
the report of miracles, never for very long together 
kept at bay by mediaeval writers. While wishing to 
avoid the affirmatio falsi and to give no heed to lying 
fables, we must not risk being guilty of a suppressio 

^ A horeali ipsiiis cedis regioiic, not of the cathedral, but of the 

new honeycomb apse, please. 



HOMEWARD BOUND 1 57 

veri. The miracles at the tomb come in such con- 
venient numbers that their weight, though it possibly 
made the guardians of the shrine, yet breaks the 
tottering faith of the candid reader. But some are 
more robust, and for them there is a lively total 
which makes Giraldus's lament for the fewness of 
miracles in his day seem rather ungrateful. ^' Four 
quinsies" — well, strong emotion will do much for 
quinsies. ^' One slow oozing" — the disease being 
doubtful, we need not dispute the remedy. ^^ Three 
paralytics "■ — in the name of Lourdes, let them pass. 
^^ Three withered, two dumb, two hunchbacks, one 
boy dead" — here we falter. ^^One jaundice case" 
sounds likelier ; ^^ one barren woman " need not 
detain us. ^^ Four dropsies, four blind, and nine 
lunatics" — and now we know the worst of it. It 
would have been a great deal easier to accept the 
whole in a venture (or forlorn hope) of faith if Hugh 
had witnessed and some one else performed these 
miracles, for he had a scrupulously veracious mind. 
He was so afraid of even the shadow of a lie that 
he used to attemper what he said with words of 
caution whenever he repeated what he had done or 
heard : ^'that is only as far as I recollect." He would 
not clap his seal to any letter which contained any 
questionable statement. ^^ We remember to have 
cited you elsewhere," a common legal phrase, would 
damn a document if he did not remember, literally 
and personally, to have done so. His influence, too, 
can be discerned in the candid Adam, whose honest 
tale often furnishes us with an antidote to his im- 
possible surmises. But veracity, unfortunately, is 
not highly infectious, and it is a little difficult not 



158 HUGH, BISHOP OF LINCOLN 

to believe that the high and serene virtues of the 
great man gone were promptly exploited for the 
small men left. One miracle there seems no reason 
to doubt. John, in an almost maudlin fit of emotional 
repentance, made peace at the funeral v^ith his 
Cistercian enemies and founded them a home at 
Beaulieu in the New Forest. Indeed, these were 
the true miracles which recommended Hugh to the 
EngUsh people, so that they regarded him as a saint 
indeed, and clamoured for him to be called one 
formally — the miracles wrought upon character, the 
callous made charitable, liars truthful, and the lechers 
chaste ; the miracles of justice, of weak right made 
strong against proud might, and poor honesty made 
proof against rich rascality ; the miracle of England 
made the sweeter and the handsomer for this humble 
and heavenly stranger. 

The later history need not detain us long. His 
body was moved, says Thomas Wykes in the Annales 
Monasticij in the year 12 19. Perhaps — and this is 
a mere guess — the place where his body lay was 
injured at the time of the battle and capture of Lincoln 
two years before ; and for better protection the 
coffin was simply placed unopened in that curious 
position two-thirds into the wall of the apse founda- 
tion, where it was found in our day. In 1220 he 
was canonized by Pope Honorius III., who was then 
at Viterbo organising a crusade, after a report vouch- 
ing for the miracles drawn up by the great Arch- 
bishop Stephen Langton and John of Fountains, a 
just and learned man, afterwards Treasurer of 
England. 

Sixty years later, that is to say, in 1280, John 



HOMEWARD BOUND 159 

Peckham, the pious friar archbisliop, Oliver Sutton, 
the cloister-building Bishop of Lincoln, and others, 
among them King Edward I. and his good wife 
Eleanor, opened the tomb and lifted out the body 
into a shrine adorned with gold and jewels and 
placed it upon a marble pedestal in the Angel Choir, 
either where the modern tomb of Queen Eleanor 
now stands or just opposite. The head came away and 
sweated wonder-working oils, and was casketted and 
placed at the end of the present Burghersh tombs, as 
a shrine of which the broken pedestal and the knee- 
worn pavement are still to be seen. The body was 
placed in a shrine cased with plates of gold and 
silver, crusted with gems, and at the last protected 
by a grille of curious wrought iron. A tooth, closed 
in beryl with silver and gilt, appears as a separate 
item in the Reformation riflings. The history of 
both shrines and of the bones they held is a tale 
by itself, like most true tales ending in mystery. 
Perhaps, as King Henry VIII. had not much venera- 
tion for holy bones, but, Uke our enlightened age, 
much preferred gold, silver, and jewels, his destroy- 
ing angels may have left the rehcs of Hugh's for- 
saken mortaUty to the lovely cathedral, where his 
memory, after seven centuries, is still pathetically 
and tenderly dear. 



Ube ©resbam press 

UNWIN BROTHERS, 
WOKING AND LONDON. 



lAR 3)? 1902 



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